Mr. Obama was elected partly because of his often-repeated promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 per year.  Anyone who had investigated Mr. Obama's background would have known immediately that his promise wouldn't last long after his inauguration.  We are now experiencing Obama's third term.  Nothing has improved; indeed since Obama is hiding behind Biden (who in turn does as he is told), there's no reason to worry about voters' objections.  Print money!  That's the Socialist Democrat party platform now.

Bidenflation Is Still Exploding Food Prices.  We've been told for four years that inflation will soon stabilize and disappear thanks to Joe Biden's awesome stewardship of the economy, and yet...  "Wholesale prices for chicken eggs soared by nearly 55% last month, and wholesale food prices rose by 3.1% (their highest monthly increase in two years)," reports far-left CNN.  [Advertisement]  Ahh, and because a Democrat is in office, we are then immediately told...  [Advertisement]  ["]Economists say not to panic.  The "egg-flation" and sudden price hikes in some major food categories are reflections of isolated incidents rather than something systemic and indicative of a reacceleration of inflation.["]  Economists always tell us not to worry when a Democrat is president.

In "Last Hurrah", Credit Card Debt Explodes Higher Despite Record High APRs As Savings Rate Craters.  One month ago, when multiple discount retailers were lamenting the sudden collapse in US consumer purchasing power, we highlighted the reason this unexpected hit to US consumption:  as the US personal savings rate had collapsed, the growth in consumer credit was slowing, and in last month, the Fed reported that credit card debt growth posted its first decline since the covid crash.  But fast forwarding just one month later, when in a striking reversal, October consumer credit growth unexpectedly reversed the dramatic September slowdown, and soared more than $19 billion, to a new record high of $5.084 trillion.

We Have Been to the Grocery Store.  The Democrats began their term with a trillion dollar + spending bill.  That spending caused inflation by sending too many dollars after the same goods and services in the U.S. economy.  Prices of all consumer goods exploded to previously unknown heights.  While the rate of inflation cooled as interest rates rose, prices remain high and consumer spending power was crippled.  All this misery remains well known even though the MSM tries to distract us with other issues.  It remains well known because it is real in the experience of the average person.  We are reminded of inflation every time we visit a grocery store or a gas station.  Our experience became more memorable when pranksters — with justification — would place stickers depicting Joe Biden saying "I did that!" next to the prices on gas pumps.  The shocking memory of gasoline reaching three, four and then five dollars a gallon did not go away even when prices peaked and retreated somewhat. [...] With the help of a compliant media, the Democrats have managed to blame inflation on Putin, Covid, "climate change" and a host of other irrelevant factors.  With their base distracted by these diversions, the Democrats can continue to buy votes with government programs.

KJP gets wrecked after boasting how much cheaper Thanksgiving meals are.  Sounding like a broken record, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was once again boasting about how much cheaper Thanksgiving meals will be this year under the Biden-Harris administration.  In addition to noting that the average price of a Thanksgiving Day meal fell 5 percent, KJP boasted about gas prices being down .25 cents [sic] per gallon.  However, the administration still does not seem to grasp that any focus on pricing invites a larger analysis that doesn't work out in its favor.  When looking at price fluctuations compared to the previous administration, consumer costs are still up significantly.  On that note, voters let their sentiments be known on Election Day, not that the Republican Party is shy about reminding folks just how much more they are paying now.  [Tweet]

No one should believe economists — they are apologists for bad policies.  Here are some of the actual Biden, Harris policies that led to high inflation:  Doling out massive amounts of taxpayer money to buy votes when the economy was already rapidly growing.  There is no excuse for running a $2 trillion deficit this year, in a supposedly growing economy.  They're just masking the problems.  Flooding the United States with millions of illegals because Biden and Harris reversed Trump's policies and ignored the law.  Issuing massive amounts of new regulations is clearly inflationary.  Blocking pipelines and drilling on federal lands while publicly seeking to destroy companies that use natural resources to produce reasonably priced energy causes inflation in the U.S. and throughout the world.  Forcing people and businesses to buy expensive health insurance policies instead of fostering freedom of choice.  The media and other Democrats intentionally lie and claim that Obamacare has made health insurance more affordable; the truth is that prices have skyrocketed for 14 years because of the Affordable Care Act.  Throwing money at colleges for 60 years has certainly added to inflation.  Then, we had a president who dictatorially paid off the loans using other people's money and debt, which is also inflationary.  Forcing car companies to make expensive electric cars and trucks that people don't want is obviously inflationary.  It raises the prices of gas-powered cars, which covers the losses and all the capital investments.

Today's real inflation rate is closing in at 40%.  Updated, accurate reports have just been released by distinguished economists, federal watchdogs and reputable fact checkers on the actual economic situation — according to these, the U.S. has been in a recession since 2022, and the real inflation rate is now hovering close to 40%.  Most recently, the Brownstone Institute indicated the actual inflation rate as close to double the "informed" rate from media and government sources: [...] So, here's where we really find ourselves:  Trapped by an on-going recession and inflation off-the-charts, and coming for us still in 2025, without a change in presidential leadership.  Don't tell Biden and Kamala — apparently, they don't want to know about any of this.

US Economic Income and Output Have Fallen Overall for Four Years.  Many have questioned the accuracy of official inflation statistics, with dozens of academic papers written on the topic and doubts voiced by sources ranging from the New York Times to former President Donald Trump.  This matters not only because of the political salience of rising prices, but also because official inflation numbers are used to calculate real economic growth by adjusting nominal dollars to inflation-adjusted dollars. [...] According to our adjustments, cumulative inflation since 2019 has been understated by nearly half.  This has resulted in cumulative growth being overstated by roughly 15%.  This is a large amount for just 5 years — for perspective, peak-to-trough drop in real GDP during the 2008 crisis was 4%.  Moreover, these adjustments indicate that the American economy has actually been in recession since 2022. These conclusions are in stark contrast to the establishment narrative that the US economy is enjoying robust growth that for some reason the public is incapable of perceiving.

2024: Voting by Facts, Not Feelings.  When Harris and Biden stepped into office in 2021, they inherited Trump's 1.4% inflation rate.  They quickly exploded the overall inflation rate to 19.75 by passing the American Rescue Plan Act.  Then, in August 2022, the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act because of Kamala's tie-breaking vote.  That act authorized $891 billion in additional spending, massively increasing inflation.  Harris's philosophy of restricting gas and oil production had a substantial detrimental effect on American consumers.  The national average cost of gasoline under Kamala rose 47%.  Americans paid $2.28 per gallon under Trump, but that same gallon would cost $3.35 today.  Under Kamala, filling up a 20-gallon gas tank would cost Americans $67; under Trump, it would cost only $45.60, or $21.40 less.  The increase in fuel costs put incredible hardships on truckers who ship various goods across the country.  The unnecessary increase had a catastrophic domino effect.  Groceries became more expensive by 20%, electricity went up 28%, and rent went up 21%.  Nearly everything Americans purchased became far more costly.

Many Little Lies.  The Democrats' campaign against Donald Trump has been characterized by so many lies that it is impossible to respond to all of them.  The sheer volume of lies prevents observers from learning the truth about any of them.  A large number of lies makes any particular lie more credible.  But we must do our part to document the truth — if for no other reason than that it is the truth.  Democrat ads claim that Trump has proposed a "national sales tax" of $4,000 per household.  Trump has proposed no such thing.  When called on it, Democrats point to left-wing think-tanks that claim that prices will rise by $3,900 as a result of Trump's proposed tariffs.  (That number is disputed among experts.)  A "national sales tax" is very different from the consequences of tariffs.  Tariffs exist now — even under the Biden administration.  Foreign countries impose crippling tariffs upon American products while subsidizing the products they send here.

A fraudulent Federal Reserve.  When Joe Biden took office, inflation took off because of his policies, yet the Federal Reserve pretended that inflation was transitory for a while.  It didn't admit that open borders, increasing regulations, out-of-control spending, and destructive, radical energy policies were causing inflation.  Jerome Powell, head of the Federal Reserve, somehow doesn't understand that flooding America with illegal immigrants puts massive pressure on prices.  Any person with common sense knows if more people demand housing, medical care, education, and everything else, then that additional demand puts great pressure on prices — but Powell said it is neutral.  Why does anyone trust him?

Kamala Harris and the 'Fair Share'.  A PAC supporting Kamala Harris runs an ad that features Harris making the following impassioned statement, "We are helping dig families out of debt by telling billionaires to pay their fair share!"  The commercial presents this exclamation as Harris' "reason for running" for office, but does not explain what it means.  Some of the audience tries to guess what this statement means while Harris' supporters do not care and will vote for her regardless of what she says.  Those who care to understand must speculate for an explanation.  To whom will "billionaires" pay this undefined "fair share?"  We can guess that she is talking about paying taxes.  She does not explain how billionaires paying more taxes will help dig families out of debt.

The Editor says...
"Dig[ging] families out of debt" is not the proper role of government, and was never seen as such until very recently — and even then, only by politicians.

Realities cannot be denied.  Are Americans better off now than four years ago?  The reality:  A trip to the grocery store tells us that food prices are substantially higher now than they were when President Trump was in the White House.  We are paying more at the gas pump and this administration has practically drained our oil reserves; leaving our National Security at great risk, we are not ready for an attack or any other emergency that might arise.  Because Secretary Petey Buttigieg does little to nothing, our infrastructure is crumbling, and the supply chain is struggling.  We have not recovered since COVID and there are still empty shelves in the grocery stores.

Why the Biden-Harris "Strong" Economy Claim Is a Big Lie.  There is only one way to rescue America's faltering economy and that's the wholesale abandonment of Washington's reckless spending, borrowing and printing policies of the last quarter century.  These policies did not remotely attain their ostensible goals of more growth, more jobs and more purchasing power in worker pay envelopes.  What they did do, of course, was to freight down the main street economy with crushing debts, dangerous financial bubbles, chronic inflation and stagnating living standards.  For want of doubt, go straight to the most basic economic metric we have — real compensation per labor hour.  The latter metric not only deletes the inflation from the pay figures, but also measures the totality of worker compensation, including benefits for health care, retirement, vacation, disability, sick leave and other fringes.

An obvious lie:
Doug Emhoff:  Not Fair To Criticize Kamala Harris For The Admin's Failures.  Vice President Kamala Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, claimed during an interview this week that it was unfair for people to criticize his wife's performance over the last three and a half years because she was not the president.  Emhoff made the remarks during a softball ABC News interview Friday morning on "Good Morning America," which came just days after the network's debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump that was extremely biased against the Republican nominee.  Co-anchor Michael Strahan asked Emhoff if he thought it was fair that his wife was being criticized for the numerous failings of the administration, even though she was named the border czar, bragged about being the last person in the room on Afghanistan, and was the tie-breaking vote on passing the American Rescue Plan — the legislation that triggered the inflation crisis.

The most important aspect of the Haitian scandal.  [Thread reader]  ... is how it reveals the whole "they work/help the economy" stuff to be an absurd farce and a lie.  The reason Haitians "work" is because they get mountains of free stuff paid for by the taxpayers in exchange.  A company can employ Haitians at the absolute minimum wage because the Haitians get free healthcare, free food, free housing, and even cash stipends which they refer to as "magic money cards":  because the cash never runs dry.  This is all subsidized by taxpayers.  So most companies, "small" and "local" businesses included, would rather pay slave wages to foreigners who are more than happy to show up to work because they know in exchange for doing so they will receive mountains of rewards from NGOs, charities, and the government.  Meanwhile the American citizens are turned into wealth extraction machines.  They pay all the taxes, don't get these same benefits, and are still forced to work for cheap wages.  They can barely make ends meet.  Inflation is killing them at the pump, at the grocery store and everywhere else in their lives because they have no reprieve from its effects and no political recourse to stop it.  But the foreigner gets shielded from this.  They don't care about their wage or the cost of food, or rent prices, because it is all paid for by other people.

Kamala Harris, Inflation, and Rip-Offs.  That a political party would intentionally mislead its voters as to the cause of inflation should be a major scandal.  While we tend to excuse such actions as mere election-year politics, these ads and the strategy behind them transcend any one election.  Inflation has raged in alternating cycles of boom and bust since before the Great Depression.  It robs us of our savings and transfers wealth without the victims' understanding or even knowledge.  This travesty can happen only because the truth about inflation is drowned in the steady drip of misleading ads and political statements.  Contrary to the claims of politicians, inflation is not something that the government must "fight."  The government does not "bring down costs."  The government need only stop inflating.  There is nothing to fight except the government's own printing press.  There is no need for legislation — especially an Inflation Reduction Act.  The government need only stop creating new dollars.

Bidenflation Still Hammering the Working Class — Minorities Hardest Hit:  WaPo.  Has inflation begun to ease back to normal?  The Biden-Harris administration wants voters to believe it, arguing that consumer-goods prices appear to have stabilized.  Have they?  Today's Producer Price Index shows annualized unadjusted wholesale inflation dipping down to 1.7% in August.  That would be welcome news for consumers, but inflation for wholesale consumer foods hit 4.2%.  Most of the overall decline came in wholesale energy prices (-8.4%), which consumers will also welcome but may not be all that good of a trade-off from their weekly visit to grocery stores.  Yesterday's Consumer Price Index offered a mixed bag, too, but not for the middle and working classes.  The overall annualized rate dropped from July's 2.9% to 2.5% in August, again mainly because of a dramatic fall in energy prices (-4.0%).  The upward spike continued in shelter costs, shooting up 5.2% in August, and included both rentals (5.2%) and owner costs (5.4%).  Insurance spiked 3.6%, and municipal utilities went up 4.2%.

It's Not the Fed That's Causing Inflation.  In their first week in January 2021, Joe and Kamala cut off every source of oil within their jurisdiction.  In the very next month, three things happened: our domestic production of oil plunged from 13.1 million barrels per day to 9.7, oil prices doubled from $55 to $110 per barrel, and the monthly inflation rate leaped from 1.4 percent to 9.6 percent.  The red-herring inflation chart they offer shows inflation peaking six months later, which distracts from the fact that their action was the sole cause of inflation.  It is a "trailing average" chart.  It takes the 9.6-percent monthly rate and averages it with the previous 11 months, which averaged 1.8 percent, and so on.  Thus, the peak of inflation appears to happen six months after it actually peaked.  A monthly chart would show the truth: that the reduction of oil supply was the direct cause of inflation.

Gas Prices Have Increased 50% Since Kamala Has Been In The White House.  Americans are largely unable to find the "joy" Democrats have touted, especially when they hit the gas pumps, as prices have risen 50 percent since Vice President Kamala Harris has been in the White House.  According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, not seasonally adjusted, the cost of gasoline has risen 50 percent since January 2021.  This is a stark reality Americans are all too familiar with.  During the second year of the Biden-Harris administration, gas prices actually broke record highs several times.

Economic Lies and Presidential Politics.  Inflation, as the name implies, is an increase in the money supply.  That's it, nothing more.  There is only one entity that can increase the supply of money: the federal government.  States can't do it, cities can't do it, Warren Buffett can't do it, Kim Kardashian can't do it.  Only the federal government can inject that money into the economy, either from taxation/fee receipts or from borrowing (that is, the issuance of government bonds).  When the money injection results from borrowing, we call it printing money, and when done to pay off deficit or debt, it is called monetizing that debt.  Adam Smith called this a "pretend payment" way back in 1776!

14 Lies Kamala Harris Told During Her DNC Speech.  [#6] Kamala Harris falsely insinuated that the 2017 tax cuts approved by the Trump administration disproportionately benefited America's wealthiest citizens.  "[Trump] fights for himself and his billionaire friends," Harris claimed.  "And he will give them another round of tax breaks that will add up to $5 trillion to the national debt."  That is not true.  Data produced by the IRS has shown that "on average all income brackets benefited substantially from the Republicans' tax reform law, with the biggest beneficiaries being working and middle-income filers, not the top 1 percent," according to The Hill.

10 Lies Leftists Tell You.  Lie #10: The U.S. economy's great; you just don't know it.  Perhaps this seems true to all the millionaire actors, athletes, newscasters, entertainers, and academics so fond of smooching Democrat derrières.  But for those of you like me, who have to pay bills and balance checkbooks, this is not the best of times, but the worst.  I mean, Burger Kings are going out of business.  Dollar Stores have had to come up with a new name since almost everything costs more than a dollar these days.  Personal credit debt is at a record high, not to mention our astronomic national debt.  How can anyone tell this particular lie without covering the smirk on his face?

Who is Gaslighting Whom?  When a politician tells you they can ban grocery store price gouging, isn't that gaslighting, straight up?  Because, as far-Right misinformation terrorists have reminded us, politicians have been promising to freeze prices for 2,000 years, and it never worked. [...] So when Kamunist Harris mournfully regrets that "A loaf of bread costs 50% more today than it did before the pandemic.  Ground beef is up almost 50%" is that gaslighting or what?  Those price rises happened on her watch.  But does she apologize for the failed policy of the Biden-Harris administration?  Hey no.  It's all the fault of "price gouging" corporations.  I remember the heroic efforts of the price-gouging grocery chains to keep food on the shelves during COVID.

The Remarkable Transformation of Kamala Harris.  Inflation is eating away at the purchasing power of Americans' take-home pay, with prices of everyday goods up nearly 20 percent since Biden took office.  The major contributor to inflation is federal deficit spending.  Harris's record in the Senate is unimpressive except when it comes to spending money we don't have.  By casting her tie-breaking Senate vote, Harris approved the passage of Biden's American Rescue Plan of 2021 and the falsely titled Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.  With these two bills, Harris added $1.9 trillion and $1.2 trillion (respectively) to the national debt, exacerbating Americans' pain at the grocery store or gas pump.

U.S. Families Spend $11.4K More Yearly Under Biden.  Thank to Joe Biden-flation and his catastrophic economic policies, American families are spending over $11,000 more annually just for necessities.  The obscene cost of inflation is hitting hardworking Americans, as overall prices have gone up almost 20% since the Meanderer-in-Chief came into office in 2021.  Americans can thank the Biden administration for that $11,400 extra for necessities, about 20% of the average U.S. annual salary.  And if you hear the lie that inflation is down, don't believe it.  All that means is that the inflation rate is allegedly slowing, and the Biden administration loves to engage in monkey business to manipulate such statistics.

Americans Feel The Heat As Bidenflation Climbs Toward 20%.  The dark reality of Bidenomics is the alarming 19.5% inflation under the President's watch, which is 5.7% annually.  When he took office, inflation was at just 1.4%. Since March 2021, inflation has consistently remained above the Federal Reserve's 2% target for 40 consecutive months.  Under Biden, the federal debt has increased by $6.9 trillion.  To finance his spending spree, the Federal Reserve printed money from nothing.  The increased money supply, without a corresponding increase in goods and services, reduced the value of each dollar, causing prices to rise quickly and leading to high inflation, effectively acting as a hidden tax on everyone.

Contrary To Media Claims, Inflation Index Shows Americans Still Face Sky-High Prices.  Contrary to the corporate media cabal's desperate attempt to paint the Consumer Price Index report for June 2024 as a sign that inflation "cooled" and will continue "cooling" and "slowing" the closer the nation gets to November's presidential election, Americans are still paying higher prices on basic day-to-day goods and services than they did in the last four years.  When the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest inflation index showing a 0.1 percent decrease in prices from May 2024 to June 2024, press outlets and the Democrat regime rushed to bill the data as a sign that inflation is "at its lowest level in more than three years."  The New York Times' Paul Krugman, whose partisan commentary on American families' financial straits is notoriously out of touch, claimed the CPI's report means the record high prices that have plagued the nation are "plummeting."  CNN also framed the latest month-over-month data as "Good news for US consumers" because it indicated inflation "fell for the first time since the early part of the pandemic."

The Editor says...
Even if inflation goes to zero and stays there, the dollar has still lost a great deal of value in the last three years.  Zero inflation this month does not fix what happened to the dollar last year.

The left's $7 trillion lie:  Biden far outpaces Trump in racking up the national debt.  Projection is blaming someone else for your own bad behavior.  We saw a classic case of projection in Thursday's presidential debate, when President Biden — who is overseeing annual budget deficits of $2 trillion — asserted that his predecessor, Donald Trump, added more to the federal debt than anyone else.  It's part of the latest leftist argument:  that if Trump wins the election, he will run deficits twice as large as Biden would.  Debate moderator Jake Tapper joined the chorus of federal finance falsehoods when he claimed Trump had "approved $8.4 trillion in new debt," while Biden's actions will increase the debt by (merely) $4.3 trillion over a decade.  Tapper was referencing a recent report by the left-leaning Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which twisted and turned the debt statistics in every contortionary way it could to reach its incredible conclusion.  CRFB, by the way, is a group that opposed the successful Trump tax reform in 2017 — yet supported several of Biden's multitrillion-dollar spending bills.

Gullibility 101.  The loony leftist assumes that the poor are poor because of the rich.  The wealthy have more than their fair share (as if wealth is limited — it isn't:  it's produced, but that's another discussion).  So — if we raise taxes on the rich, we'll have enough money to give a lot to the poor and we'll all be equal.  Right?  That just beats all.  How do they think the rich got that way?  Not by being stupid.  No law has ever been written that didn't have a loophole in it.  The rich can afford to lobby Congress to get those loopholes created.  And the rich can afford to hire people smart enough to find and appropriate those loopholes.  What makes matters worse is that not only do the rich get richer, but those whose job it is to redistribute the wealth gain power and use that power to get even richer themselves.  So, the poor will always be with us.

Biden Spokesman Jean-Pierre:  Gas [and] Food Prices [are] Down.  Data:  No, They Aren't.  In the real world where Americans live, gas, food, and other consumer prices have risen dramatically since President Joe Biden took office.  Prices at the grocery store are out of sight.  Filling the gas tank practically requires a second mortgage.  And forget buying a home at today's prices and mortgage interest rates.  Apartment rents are zooming.  But in Biden World, all is well.  Or so says spokesman Karine Jean-Pierre:  In Biden World, gas and food prices are "down," all thanks to Biden, of course.

Inflation May Have Been Much Higher Than We Thought.  Former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers put together a Twitter thread back in February which was widely ignored.  In his comments, Summers makes an argument that increasing interest rates drastically accelerated the true inflation rate experienced by an average citizen.  He specifically calls out this increased inflation was missed by the current CPI measurement. [...] The former Secretary of the Treasury was not looking to simply complain though.  He and his colleagues created a new methodology to calculate CPI in an attempt to get closer to the truth about what has been going on.

Retail sales rise by paltry 0.1% as shoppers feel pinch of high inflation.  Retail sales barely rose last month as Americans burdened by persistently sticky rates of inflation increasingly pull back on spending.  Data released on Tuesday by the Commerce Department showed that the value of retail purchases rose 0.1% in May — below analyst estimates of 0.2%.  Retail sales for the previous month were revised downward to 0.2%.

The Editor says...
Lots of information about inflation and unemployment is quietly revised a few weeks after it is first published, but the revised (worse) numbers don't make headlines.

A Slate writer gaslights about the allegedly great Biden economy.  Zachary Carter, writing for hard-left Slate, has issued his verdict on the economy:  It's great.  Wholly contrary to popular belief, he assures us, "Inflation Is Not Destroying Joe Biden."  So why can't the rest of America see it?  'Tis a mystery to be solved, and he buries us under "data" to make his point.  Ultimately, his piece is a primal scream of horror that Americans insist on believing the realities of their wallets over the cherry-picked data in his analysis.  First, Carter first declares that inflation is a thing of the past.  "According to the Federal Reserve's preferred measure, prices rose just 2.7 percent between April of 2023 and April of 2024."  The problem with the Fed is that its "core" inflation number excludes the cost of food, housing, and energy — the things that average Americans spend the vast majority of their income purchasing.

Prices Are Never Going Down.  Biden tells us he's fighting inflation, and it seems as if we hear every day in the news about the Fed leaving interest rates unchanged to fight inflation.  But prices are still high and rising.  The latest numbers just released show that prices year to date are still rising faster than expected.  It's true that two years ago, inflation peaked at around 9%, and today, it's hovering in the mid-3s.  So why haven't prices come down?  It's a common misconception, often fueled by the crowd on the left alleging corporate greed, but inflation isn't the price level — it's the rate of increase in prices.  A reduction from 9% to 3% doesn't mean that prices should come down 6%; it means that now they will go up at 3%. Corporations may be greedy, but that has nothing to do with the inflation rate.  The government, on the other hand, plays a significant role in managing inflation and deflation through its monetary and fiscal policies.

The Editor says...
The price of groceries may never go down, but the price of gasoline will go down quite a bit as soon as Donald Trump or some other future President opens up petroleum production on all areas of the U.S., and removes senseless restrictions on the refining and transportation of oil.

Private Enterprise Is the Victim, Not the Perpetrator, of Inflation.  There was a nice deli down the street I had never visited so I made a casual visit.  They have been around for many decades, a local favorite.  Looking for a menu, there were printed ones but the prices were all scratched out.  The owner pointed up to a chalkboard on which they write prices of the day.  The printed menus from 18 months ago had sandwiches at $9.  The chalkboard that day had them at $15 and higher.  I noted the difference to the owner.  There was deep pain in his face.  He could not afford to reprint menus so the chalkboard is the only way to keep up with rising prices.  He clearly felt awful about this but margins are very tight.  Raising prices was necessary in order to keep the business in the black.  This is because the prices of absolutely everything have gone through the roof, from ingredients to transportation to utilities and rent to labor (he has to retain employees and compete in a market of limited supply) to insurance and repairs.

In the best economy ever, 78% of Americans see fast food as a "luxury".  In research conducted by Lending Tree, Americans were asked about their food choices, and if you've been living outside the rose-colored windows of the White House and Wall Street, the results are not at all surprising. [...] Nearly half (46%) say fast-food restaurants cost similarly to their local sit-down restaurants, while 22% say fast food is more expensive.

Quantitative Brainwashing.  We're all familiar with the term, "quantitative easing." [...] When QE was implemented, the purchasing power was weak and both government and personal debt had become so great that further borrowing would not solve the problem; it would only postpone it and, in the end, exacerbate it.  Effectively, QE is not a solution to an economic problem, it's a bonus of epic proportions, given to banks by governments, at the expense of the taxpayer.  But, of course, we shouldn't be surprised that governments have passed off a massive redistribution of wealth from the taxpayer to their pals in the banking sector with such clever terms.  Governments of today have become extremely adept at creating euphemisms for their misdeeds in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the populace.  At this point, we cannot turn on the daily news without being fed a full meal of carefully-worded mumbo jumbo, designed to further overwhelm whatever small voices of truth may be out there.

If the Dems ditch Biden, what then?  [Scroll down]  More myths are likely to spring from the debates, since actual transcripts will fail to invoke the true meaning of what was said and implied.  For starters, I expect Biden to strenuously deny the seriousness of inflation.  He will, again, blame greedy corporate price-gougers — as if there were really no such thing as competition among businesses for customers.  He will also point to the Dow going above 40,000 for the first time.  However, using the online inflation calculator, a Dow at 40,000 today would drop down to 32,900 if it were expressed in January 2020 dollars.  That really wasn't all that long ago.

Has America Finally Had It With Joe Biden?  Joe Biden's personal approval rating is at historic lows; almost all his policies do not poll fifty percent.  He is behind Trump in almost all the swing states.  And now he lies serially even to sympathetic interviewers.  In short, finally Biden has been exposed for what he always was and represented. [...] Biden just told his greatest whopper that inflation was at 9 percent (actually 1.4 percent) when he took office and yet soon spiked to 9 percent due to his reckless deficit spending and money printing spree.

GenZ Is Furious About the Economy and They Are Blaming Previous Generations for Wrecking It.  No matter how hard they work, millions of Gen Z Americans are just barely scraping by month after month, and many of them are seriously [angry] about it.  In fact, videos of Gen Z Americans ranting about the economy on TikTok have been racking up millions of views.  Many of those that are ranting about the economy absolutely hate the fact that no matter how much they try they can never seem to get ahead.  Others just keep getting deeper and deeper in debt because they can never seem to make enough money to pay all the bills.  And do you know who they are blaming for the pain that they are experiencing?  They are blaming those that belong to previous generations for wrecking the economy, and they are right.

The Editor says...
You wrecked the economy, boo hoo, but please forgive my student loans, and don't stop sending money to Ukraine, and finish that high-speed rail line, and shut down all the coal-fired power plants, and don't lock up shoplifters because they're just trying to feed their families, and build a new stadium for our football team, and keep bringing in more deadbeats from Mexico and giving them free stuff.  But how dare you wreck the economy!

Behind The Inexplicable "Strength" Of US Consumers Is $700 Billion In "Phantom Debt".  Yesterday we discussed the latest consumer credit data, which revealed that the amount of credit card debt across the US has hit a new record high of $1.337 trillion (even though it appears to have finally hit a brick wall, barely rising in March by the smallest amount since the covid crash), even as the savings rate has tumbled to an all time low.  [Chart]  To be sure, credit card debt is just a small portion (~6%) of the total household debt stack: as the next chart from the latest NY Fed consumer credit report shows, the bulk, or 70%, of US household debt is in the form of mortgages, followed by student loans, auto loans, credit card debt, home equity credit and various other forms.  Altogether, the total is a massive $17.5 trillion in total household debt.  [Video clip]

This Economy Does Not Look Good.  Core inflation rose at a 3.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter and 2.9 percent in March, the Commerce Department reports.  Fearful of renewed inflation, the Federal Reserve will not ease up on the money supply and will keep interest rates at their highest level in more than two decades, as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell announced on Wednesday, which should slow economic growth further.  Meanwhile, President Biden is doing his very best to destroy the economy via regulatory brutality.  The American Action Forum reports that Biden "agencies published $875.3 billion in total costs" on the U.S. economy in just one week in mid-April, including tighter emission standards for cars, tougher efficiency requirements for light bulbs, and silica exposure limits clearly meant to end coal mining.  Biden's one-week regulatory bacchanal amounted to "[j]ust $20 billion less than what President Obama did in two terms!" notes AAF President Douglas Holtz-Eakin.  The contrast between Biden and Trump is ten times as dramatic as that: $1.37 trillion by Biden to $30.1 billion by Trump by April of year four of their respective administrations.

The economic indicators' used by the media elite.  David Chalian, political director for CNN, can't understand for the life of him why the economy is still "front and center" for most Americans, because there are other things that Joe Biden "performs worse on."  (Are there though?)  On a recent CNN segment, Chalian was caught scoffing at the stupid rubes ("Americans") who "disapprove" of Biden's handling of the economy, because these uneducated flyover saps pay more attention to how they're feeling rather than the "economic indicators and data" that all the media elite "report on constantly."  [Tweet with video clip] [...] Those "feelings" that Chalian's talking about aren't really feelings, but legitimate indicators of where the economy is, and ones with which we interact constantly; here are just a few examples: [...]

Joe Biden says things, and then there's reality.  If I were advising Biden, I would also tell him to stop pretending his policies have brought inflation down.  Joe also claims that his policies have significantly brought down inflation.  Maybe statistically, but average people's inflation is still way up.  The poor, the middle class, and seniors on fixed income are being decimated by the price of necessities that have skyrocketed due to Biden's policies, especially on energy.  For example, I received my homeowner's insurance bill this week.  It is up over 15% from last year.  I have never had a claim, have an excellent credit score, and have a $2,000 deductible along with a 10% deductible on earthquake insurance.  We built our house 36 years ago, and in Springfield, Illinois, the value has increased only one or two percent per year, at most.  It sure doesn't help to live in the state with the second highest property tax rate in the country.

The Real Inflation Number Under Biden Reached 18% and Is Still Hovering at a 40-Year High.  A recent research paper by four noted economists, including Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary under Barack Obama and former Harvard President, discovered that the real inflation rate during the Biden years, using pre-1983 calculations reached 18% in 2022.  The number is the highest inflation rate the country has seen in over 50 years.  This research project was published by these four authors at the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research in late February and is just now making waves.

Bidenomics Update:  Staggering Under the Weight of It All.  Being subject to the progressive grifting regime has not been beneficial in the least for the country's psyche, soul, or security, either safety or financial.  One tidbit that dropped yesterday, which I only bumped up against, was the explosion of credit card delinquencies.  In this Biden induced time of wage stagnation and job insecurity coupled with exploding household costs, it's not really surprising when even formerly comfortable people are feeling the pinch.

Climate Change Is Not Causing Inflation.  A recent study in the journal Nature: Communications Earth and Environment claims climate change is contributing to price inflation.  The study's authors say they found climate change harms economic productivity and food production, leading to higher prices.  They examined more than 27,000 monthly consumer price index data points around the globe.  I can't begin to describe all the ways this claim is not just outright false but is misleading in a manner clearly intended to motivate restrictions on fossil fuel production and use, policies which would in fact increase energy prices, harm food production, and result in lost jobs, higher prices, and lower incomes.  Policymakers taking this study seriously might impose policies which themselves would result in worse inflation than the world is currently experiencing, which is in part due to existing climate policies.

This Is Biden's Reelection Pitch?  We recently received a Biden-Harris campaign fundraising email, and if this is the best pitch they can make, then Joe Biden deserves to lose, bigly.  It's full of lies.  It's completely disconnected from reality.  Biden takes no responsibility for the nation's current troubles, and offers absolutely no solutions.  The email begins "I know this message is long."  Except it's not — it's less than 430 words, which isn't much for an email that promises to remind readers "of all the things we have been able to accomplish because of our victory in 2020."  The next sentence is a flat-out lie.  "When Kamala and I were sworn in over two years ago, the economy was on its back."  The truth is that when Joe and Kamala were sworn in, the economy was roaring back.  Gross domestic product had regained the ground it lost in COVID-19 recession — a recession that lasted only two months, making it the shortest in recorded U.S. history.  Half of the people who lost jobs were back at work.  The stock market had climbed above its pre-COVID peak.

Price Inflation Accelerates For Second Month As Biden Blames "Greed".  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest price inflation data, CPI inflation in February accelerated for the second month in a row, and price inflation hasn't proven nearly as transitory as the regime's economists have long predicted.  According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 3.2 percent year over year during February, without seasonal adjustment.  That's the thirty-sixth month in a row of inflation well above the Fed's arbitrary 2 percent inflation target.

Larry Summers:  Inflation [is] Much Worse Than [the] Government Says.  Lawrence Summers, Treasury Secretary under Clinton and economic advisor to Obama, is likely getting himself into trouble once again with the Left.  While president of Harvard, he blurted out the obvious fact that men and women may be different, leading to a vote of no confidence by the faculty of Harvard, and since Biden's election he has been critical of the president's economic policies, warning that they were harming the economy.  Well, he's done it again, this time in an economic paper that provides the explanation for what the Left calls the "vibesession" — the persistent belief by Americans that the economy is much worse than the official statistics indicate.  [Tweet]

Bidenflation Is Even Worse Than You Think.  It doesn't take a master's degree in economics to understand that prices are up in every sector of the economy.  The economy under Joe Biden is nickel-and-diming us at every turn, and Americans can see past the smoke and mirrors that the White House is using to try to convince us that everything is fine.  The federal government's measure of price increases, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), has consistently shown that inflation isn't going away.  The most recent CPI report indicates a 3.2% increase in prices from Feb. 2023 to Feb. 2024. That's a significant increase, but it only shows the increase over a rolling 12 months.  To get a clearer picture of what Bidenflation looks like, we need to compare prices between now and when Biden took office.  That's what TIPPinsights did, and the results show you that Bidenflation isn't just worse than the White House wants you to believe — it's worse than you might have realized.

Fact-Checking the Fabulist in Chief's State of the Union.  During Thursday's State of the Union address, Biden fully displayed his fabulist tendencies.  His assessment of the administration's accomplishments and his impact was not anchored in reality. [...] Of course, he went on a "pay your fair share" rant, accusing Republicans of giving corporations and the wealthy tax cuts.  The top 10% of taxpayers pay roughly 75% of all federal tax collected.  And the U.S. Treasury begs to differ.  The wealthy pay a much larger share of their total income.

Biden took a recovering economy and intentionally wrecked it.
Biden Falsely Says He Inherited An Economy on Brink of Collapse.  Claim:  Biden claimed that the U.S. economy was on the brink of disaster when he took office.  "I inherited an economy that was on the brink.  Now our economy is the envy of the world!" Biden said.  Verdict:  False.  President Biden inherited an economy that was strongly rebounding from the pandemic.  In the fourth quarter of 2020, the economy grew at an annual rate of 4.3 percent.  In the prior quarter, it had grown at an annual rate of 33.1 percent, as the economy whipsawed from lockdown to reopening.  As Biden took office, in the first quarter of 2021, the economy was growing at a 5.2 percent annual rate.  (Until the Department of Commerce revised its calculations last fall, this was reported as an annual rate of 6.3 percent.)

Welcome to Nickel-and-Dime Nation.  [Scroll down]  The whole time Biden has been in office, the price of everything has gone up, and all those increases pile on top of one another.  We're not just seeing it at Mexican restaurants; it's popping up everywhere.  My mom, sister, and nieces went to a restaurant on Friday that has always served honey butter crescent rolls at the table.  The waitress brought their rolls out just like always without even asking, but when the bill arrived, there was a $1.99 charge for them.  The most recent consumer price index information shows that all items have gone up 3.1% between Jan. 2023 and Jan. 2024.  Food prices alone have gone up 2.6% over that timeframe, and that breaks down into a 1.2% increase for "food at home" and a 5.1% increase for "food away from home" — which we know includes those amazing honey butter crescent rolls and those addictive chips and salsa. "Food away from home" saw one of the biggest increases of any sector over the past year.  It's not just $2.50 for chips and salsa here and $1.99 for crescent rolls there.  It's also an extra 20¢ per gallon for gas, another dollar for a pound of ground beef, another rise on your electric bill, and everything else going up little by little.  This economy is nickel-and-dime-ing us everywhere we turn, and we can place the blame for that at the feet of Biden and his administration.

The Editor says...
Technically, you don't have to pay for stuff that the waiter brings to your table that you did not order. However, it is also true that you must not get into an argument with the waiter lest he should spit in your food. U2VlIEhUTUwgY29tbWVudHMu

Even Biden Doesn't Want To Talk About 'Bidenomics' Anymore.  After President Joe Biden embraced the term "Bidenomics," he and his White House staff couldn't get enough of it.  But either Biden's forgotten all about it, or the administration realized that it was doing no good to brag about something the public didn't believe.  Either way, the term is vanishing from use.  It was in a speech in Chicago on June 28, 2023, that Biden decided to bear-hug the term.  "I didn't come up with the name.  I really didn't," he said.  "I didn't realize the economists in the Wall Street Journal did.  But I'm happy to call it 'Bidenomics.'  And guess what?  Bidenomics is working."  Biden thought he was catching a wave.  The economy seemed to be turning a corner, the rate of inflation was decelerating, job growth was strong.  Surely the public would come to realize that the worst was behind.

Eric Adams Says Giving Pre-Paid Credit Cards to Illegal Migrants Is 'Smart' and a 'Real Win'.  Democrat mayor Eric Adams is defending his decision to hand out pre-paid credit cards to illegal migrants living illegally in New York City.  During a press conference on Friday, Adams claimed that the move is a "real win" and a "smart way to bring down the cost" of the thousands of illegal aliens who have invaded the city.  Adams said that the city is saving appropriately $600,000 a month and $7.2 million a year by giving "individuals" — notice the Democrat didn't call them illegal migrants — pre-paid cards that will be allowed to be used at local bodegas, grocery stores, supermarkets, and convenience stores across Manhattan.

White House:  Inflation 'Very Close to Normal' and Prices 'Moving in the Right Direction'.  During an interview with ABC News on Thursday, White House Senior Adviser Gene Sperling stated that "people have been through a tough few years" but the PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) price index reading is "very close to normal" and "prices are moving in the right direction" and "moderating."  But you can't expect them to not go up.  Sperling said, "It's been a tough few years since the pandemic," but "inflation is coming down.  In fact, it was really 2.4% in this measure, 2.8% if you don't include food and gas.  And that's not good enough, but it is very close to normal.  And there are a lot of different areas where you have seen prices come down."

Obama Treasury Sec: 'Economy Booming, Americans Just Don't Know It.'  A newly released working paper by former Obama government Treasury Secretary Larry Summers asserts that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) may underestimate Americans' financial pains from rising interest rates.  "The economy is booming and everyone knows it — except for the American people," Summers states.The elevated interest rates enacted by the Federal Reserve have increased expenses such as buying a house or carrying credit card balances.  Summers' paper, titled "The Cost of Money is Part of the Cost of Living," explores the disconnect between what he claims are positive economic indicators and the public's persisting 'sour mood' on the Biden economy.

Federal Reserve records massive losses, makes up fictitious value called 'deferred assets' to compensate.  When inflation started rising rapidly after Biden took office, the Federal Reserve and others falsely called it transitional.  Biden campaigned on, and has governed on, policies to intentionally destroy reasonably priced energy.  As a result of these radical policies, energy prices soared, and energy inflates the cost of everything.  Crude oil is used in over 6,000 products, and crude oil is still up over 90% from the day Biden was inaugurated.  Yet I have not seen members of the Federal Reserve call out Biden for his energy policy as a great cause of inflation.  Biden's green policies are forcing car companies to produce electric cars, which are losing them a massive amount of money, because the public doesn't want them.  Then the car companies jack up the price of gas-powered vehicles so they can cover the losses, and make profits to cover the cost to manufacture the more expensive E.V.s.  Consumers, especially the poor and middle classes, are hit with huge increases in car payments.  I haven't heard the Fed say how that contributes to inflation.  Because of the increased cost of cars, car repairs and insurance rates are soaring — a "staggering 23%" increase for repair costs in just one year, and a "26%" increase for insurance rates, which equates to a $500 per year jump.

Core Inflation Comes in Hot Enough to Bake Shockaship Cookies.  Somehow we simple-minded Americans aren't falling for the line blaming the big, mean companies for everything.  Sometimes, it's the people in charge whose policy decisions -- or lack thereof -- facilitate the shrinkflation thanks to administrative policy-induced inflation.  And no matter how you beat Americans over the head whining about a smaller bag of potato chips or fewer chips in your shockaship cookie being the fault of manufacturers, we're the ones who get to experience paying for all of it.  Or less of it.  We know what it's been like out here in the real world, and all the smoke blowing you and the toadies do doesn't change the fact that y'all own this mess.

The myth of all-tax-funded government spending.  To put it bluntly:  Our tax dollars are not funding America's financial largesse.  Instead, we fund it in an even less honest way, by printing currency and heaping it onto a $34 trillion pile of national debt that has little chance of ever being paid back.  Uncle Sam can pull off this sleight-of-hand without causing domestic inflation because the greenback is needed for trade by the rest of the world.  This demand allows the U.S. to send about 60% of all currency created to our international trading partners.  We effectively export our inflation to the rest of the world, which insulates Americans from price shocks we would otherwise experience had all that new currency stayed home.  This trick was revealed by the COVID-19 stimulus.  Massive quantities of newly created dollars remained in-house — funneled directly into the pockets of American spenders to tide them over during the economic shutdown.  As we now know, this was clearly a recipe for significant domestic inflation — something Americans wouldn't accept.  The real question is:  When will the rest of the world finally refuse to subsidize Americans' unearned standard of living by accepting our ever-increasing glut of dollars?

We are in a depression and do not even know it.  Uncle Sam is now telling us inflation is under control and we are headed for a soft landing.  Balderdash!  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for 2023 was 3.4% year over year.  Not horrible.  But do not forget that 6.5% occurred in 2022, and 7% in 2021.  That is a total of 16.9% in three years.  You are paying at least 17% more than at the start of this decade.  Regardless of what the BLS would like you to believe, prior year inflation does not go back to zero with the beginning of each new year.

Government says, 'Trust me!  The economy's fine!'  Listening to federal economists and the president, whose job evaluations are based on a growing economy, the economy is not embroiled in a recession.  They quote arcane figures and ratios like GDP, CPI, Jobless Claims, etc.  And they use these numbers to hide facts that are painfully obvious to all:  our economic situation is dire.  Every citizen feels the pain of spending more dollars for every product or service he purchases.  The cost of filling your car with gas takes at least 50% more dollars than it did three years ago.  Same, or worse, with groceries to feed your family.  It is obvious and painful that citizens have to expend more dollars for the same product or service.  That is the definition of inflation.  So no matter what the federal economists say about CPI, we are feeling the pain of a dollar that buys less than it did before.  Devaluation of the dollar is the cause of price inflation.

Janet Yellen Throws Biden Under the Bus With Astounding Comment Destroying His Claims About Inflation.  So many people have been crushed under the bootheel of "Bidenomics" and Bidenflation for so long.  It's one of the main reasons Joe Biden's numbers are in the basement in terms of approval, particularly when it comes to the economy.  First, the Biden team denied the reality of the crushing inflation, calling it "transitory."  Then they claimed it wasn't Joe Biden's fault, despite his excessive spending.  They blamed it on Russia and greedy corporations, among others.  Now Biden has been saying prices are coming down and claiming credit, even though prices are still up more than when he came in.  In his latest remarks in South Carolina, he also blamed the greedy corporations for Bidenflation.  [Tweet]

House Republicans Agree To Help Democrats Grow The Welfare State And Shrink The Workforce.  The legislation increases the portion of the subsidy considered refundable — that is, the amount that households can receive as a cash payment over and above any income tax liability they have.  Under current law, $1,600 of the $2,000 subsidy is refundable, but the legislation would increase that threshold to the full $2,000 in 2025.  While this provision, along with the others discussed below, will technically expire in 2025, Democrats will likely move to extend all of them as part of consideration of the Trump tax plan, major portions of which will also expire next year.  While Congress calls this particular program the "child tax credit," the term in many respects constitutes a misnomer, because most of the payments go to individuals who owe no income taxes.  For instance, the Joint Committee on Taxation found that over 91 percent — or $30.6 billion of the $33.5 billion cost — of these changes to the "child tax credit" would come via outlay (i.e., spending) effects, making it much more of a welfare subsidy than a reduction in tax liability.

Profits Do Not Cause Inflation:  Causal Fallacies as Economic Disinformation.  Economic fallacies are a booming business in an inflationary era.  Recent attempts to promote the idea that corporations raised prices in the pursuit of higher profits, creating the last three years' inflation, are not new.  As inflation reached its apex in 2022, that claim (along with a handful of others) became common, as it has been many times before that.  It's an assertion readily embraced by the large number of individuals who, seeing poor or declining economic conditions, are naturally predisposed to blame producers and the productive more generally as opposed to politicians and technocrats.  Over the past few years, US citizens have been told that gas station owners, Vladimir Putin, ocean shippers, and other entities are to blame for prices rocketing up.  Efforts have been made to confuse Americans (and anyone else following along) between month-to-month and year-to-year inflation statistics.  Americans have also been lied to regarding prices in the United States versus other nations.

Biden Does Some Laughable Gaslighting About the US Having the 'Best Economy' in New Interview.  [Scroll down]  I think this has to be one of the things that most annoys Americans about Biden, his disregard for the truth and a disregard for the American people.  He's saying people are just deceived by the media into having a bad opinion of the economy.  It isn't because they're having to pay more for everything.  Most people know how much they are spending for groceries and gas.  Many know they can no longer afford to buy a house at this time because of the incredibly high interest rates.  Biden can't appreciate any of this, as he headed to his umpteenth vacation this weekend to Camp David.

Biden's Latest Remarks on Economy Show He Has No Idea What He Is Talking About.  Joe Biden has horrible approval ratings when it comes to the economy.  That's put the Biden team in a quandary as to what to do when the media asks them about this fact.  They've claimed it's just bad messaging — that Americans just don't understand what's going on.  That of course is both presumptuous and insulting, acting like Americans are stupid and don't understand when they are paying more for everything.

Inflation was already too high, and then it went higher.  A lot of people spent this morning trying to make Thursday's inflation numbers sound fine.  [Tweets]  This is part of a year-long public messaging campaign arguing that the President Joe Biden economy is perfectly perfect and that anyone who doesn't like it is divorced from reality.  The main evidence behind this argument was that inflation was falling, and so people should be happy — or at least less angry.  The problem with this argument is that it ignores the basic fact that inflation is still too high.  There is a normal level of inflation, and it's about 2%.  Standard economists seem to think that 2% is the right level of inflation.  But inflation has been significantly higher than 2% consistently since Joe Biden came into office.  December of last year saw prices 3.4% higher than they were a year before.

Biden Welcomes 2024 With More Lies About His Flailing Economy.  Serial liar President Joe Biden welcomed 2024 with more deceptions about the flailing economy and his role in exacerbating it.  "My hope is that everybody has a healthy, happy, and safe new year, but beyond that, I hope they understand that we're in a better position than any country in the world to lead the world.  We're coming back, and it's about time," Biden said during his cameo on ABC's "New Year's Rockin' Eve" on Dec. 31. [...] A plurality of voters say the economy is their top issue going into the 2024 election, which is why the White House and corporate media repeatedly insist Americans' perceptions of the economy, not the record-high prices that are here to stay, are the problem.  They cover up Americans' sticker shock by claiming inflation is "cooling" and that Americans are experiencing "low unemployment" ushered in by the Democrat regime.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  [Tweet]  Inflation may have slightly decreased in 2023 since peaking in 2021, but it still hasn't reached pre-pandemic levels.  Year over year, especially, continues to rise.  In November 2023 alone, Americans paid 3.1 percent more for goods and services than they did in 2022.

Biden's Campaign Message 2024.  Biden saw his inflation rate rise to a 40 year high of 10% in April of 2022 and the current inflation rate is 3.1%, more than double what it was (1.4%) at the end of the Trump administration.  Biden passed the enormously expensive "Inflation Reduction Act" but now must admit that it failed to reduce inflation, perhaps because, as John Kerry admits, it was really about his climate obsession and had little to do with inflation.

TV Says You're Wrong, Joe Biden's Economy Is Really Wonderful.  As polls show Joe Biden's re-election is in peril because of the public's negative opinion of how he's handled the economy, TV viewers woke up Friday morning to a round of happy talk telling them that, despite what they might think, the economy is really quite spectacular.  "The economy is in solid shape.  Job growth is steady and inflation is cooling," ABC's Elizabeth Schulze exclaimed on Good Morning America.  Over on Today, NBC's Tom Costello cheered that travel will be cheaper this Christmas: "Gas prices now below $3 a gallon in more than 20 states, so if you are planning to hit the road for the holidays, you'll have company."  Earlier this week, NBC's Christine Romans declared that Americans who told pollsters that the economy is bad are just wrong.

The Biden Administration Has Become Completely Delusional on the Economy.  Things are not going well for the Biden administration.  Despite the marketing genius that is "Bidenomics," Americans continue to not buy what the president and his handlers are selling.  Still, they march valiantly forward, appearing on friendly news networks to tout their supposed economic successes, hoping for some messaging traction.  Instead, even mainstream press members are growing weary.  On Sunday, it was Biden budget director Shalanda Young's turn to try to convince people that water isn't wet.  What transpired was pure delusion.  [Tweet with video clip]

Bidenflation Right Before Your Eyes.  The economy is the single most concerning political issue for Americans.  If you need a source other than your eyes and ears, there are multiple polling agencies, including Gallup and Pew, that reveal this to be the case.  More specifically, inflation is the most cited political issue by a plurality of Americans.  Thanks to the foolish economic policies of the Biden administration, the price increases that have plagued the U.S. the past few years have hit most Americans quite hard.  In other words, "Bidenomics" is best described as "Bidenflation."  Of course, Joe Biden, his Democrat colleagues, and his media apologists are working overtime to attempt to gaslight as many Americans as possible.  Biden and his ilk have gone so far as to claim that Americans' concerns on inflation are due to "disinformation" spread via social media.

Proof That Inflation In The U.S. Is Wildly Out Of Control.  Do you believe the politicians in Washington or do you believe your own eyes?  The politicians keep telling us that "inflation is low", but everyone can see that everything sure does cost a lot more than it once did.  Our standard of living just keeps going down, and even JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is admitting that "inflation is hurting people".  But how can inflation be "hurting people" if it is under control?  Of course the truth is that it isn't under control.  If the official rate of inflation was still measured using the formula that was in place in 1980, it would be well into double digit territory right now.  Prices have been rising much faster than paychecks have, and that is putting an extraordinary amount of financial stress on the more than 60 percent of U.S. adults that currently live paycheck to paycheck.

Biden administration is 'spooked' over price complaints.  A Five Guys customer's video complaining about the extremely high prices of the items at the fast-food chain has resurfaced on multiple social media platforms.  Michelle Newell posted the clip to TikTok explaining that she and her husband had paid $42 for two cheeseburgers, a side of fries and two milkshakes.  The visibly upset patron told viewers that the couple had visited a Five Guys location on a Saturday afternoon for lunch.  Newell shared her anger last year — but a check by DailyMail.com Friday evening confirmed it remains just as expensive to buy the same meal.  Newell said she ordered a regular cheeseburger for herself, another cheeseburger with mushrooms for her husband and a side of fries.  The couple also got two milkshakes.  She said that 'we're absolutely done' and businesses are 'playing with their customers'.  According to the Five Guys current menu, regular-sized cheeseburgers cost $12.09 each, while regular fries are priced at $6.89.  [A]nd milkshakes cost $5.89 each.

The Editor says...
In my opinion, Whataburger makes a better hamburger for one third of the Five Guys' price.  But the word is getting around, which is why there's almost never a crowd at Five Guys.  Even so, the price of everything is going up rapidly, so the prices at Five Guys are not all that extraordinary.  They're just ahead of the curve.

Biden Says That Prices Are Still Too High so Companies Should Just Lower Them.  Joe Biden has apparently noticed that the price of everything is much higher on his watch than a few years ago.  He is now asking sellers to just lower their prices. [...] Companies don't lower prices just because inflation is politically inconvenient for the president and his party.

Who You Gonna Believe:  Your Wallet or Your Lying Eyes?  Joe Biden and his surrogates keep trying to convince and shame the American people into believing that the economy is doing great and that "Bidenomics" is the reason.  Nice try.  The people are unhappy and not buying it.  While this is an emotional reaction, it also has a basis in real facts about the state of the economy, which are refracted through individuals' personal circumstances.  The first and most glaring issue is that everything is more expensive than it was a few years ago.  On top of this, wages have not kept up, real wealth and income have declined, and middle class people find themselves harried by competing and rising costs in healthcare, electricity, food, housing, tuition, and cars.  People who thought of themselves as middle class sometimes find themselves descending into proletariat status.  In the more extreme cases, people become homeless late in life, having lost all their resources to deal with job loss or other emergencies.

Biden Team in Disarray Over Messaging, 'Working With Social Media Platforms to Counter Misinformation'.  According to a new Washington Post story, the Biden team is at its wit's end.  They don't know what to do to convince the American people that the economy is in good shape.  Of course, part of the reason they're failing so badly is because people know how much more they've had to pay for everything, and they see the high interest rates.  Young people who would like to buy a home can't even do so in the current economy.  But they're still trying to sell this to us, such as by claiming Thanksgiving was cheaper this year.  They leave out that it was more expensive than when Joe Biden came in and hit everything with Bidenflation.  Their latest efforts were an example of how badly they are failing with the public.

Bidenomics:  The High Price of Gaslighting.  Anyone still wondering why voters trust former President Trump more than President Biden on the economy should read what the White House posted on X about inflation last week:  "Ahead of the holiday season, costs are down for everything from airline tickets and car rentals to toys and TVs."  Biden and his underlings continue to believe public disapproval of his disastrous economic performance can be improved with happy talk and cherry picked statistics.  It assumes Americans can't remember how much less the cost of living was when Biden was elected.  This is an insult to the intelligence of the voters and a losing strategy. [...] The 3.2 percent inflation rate is nearly three times the 1.2 percent rate that Biden inherited.  It is down "65 percent" only because the Biden's administration let it skyrocket to 9.1 percent before attempting to get it under control.  That gas is "below $3.40" hardly compares well to the national average of $2.11 that prevailed when Biden was elected.

The Atlantic:  You Americans are too dumb to know a good economy when you see it.  Since Biden's inauguration, inflation has hit Americans hard.  Of late, it's slowed slightly, and some prices are dropping (who needs a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, anyway?), but Americans know who's at fault:  Biden.  Fear not, though, Joe.  The Atlantic has ridden to the rescue to say it's not Joe's fault.  Instead, Americans just don't get how good they have it.

Biden brags that egg prices are down 22% after tripling in price since he took office.  According to the White House, history had not begun when the president was born 81 years ago.  It didn't even begin when Joe Biden became president nearly three years ago.  Instead, the executive branch would like you to believe that history and price levels began only one year ago.  [Tweet]  There's a reason just 2% of voters polled by the New York Times said that the economy under "Bidenomics" is excellent:  they weren't born yesterday.  We're currently in year three of the worst inflationary crisis of the past 40, and tone-deaf posts like this one from the White House feel like an insult to the common sense of the public.  Airline tickets may be 13% lower than they were a year ago, but they're 21% higher than they were when Biden took office.  Rental car rates are down 9.6% from a year ago, but they're up 55% since Biden took office.  Egg prices may be down 22% from a year ago, but they're up 40% since Biden took office.  Milk prices may be down 1.6% from last year, but they're up 11% since Biden took office.  Bacon prices may be down 5.1% from last year, but they're up 24% since Biden took office.

Inflation is down unless you buy food to eat.  We keep hearing that inflation is down, lower than a year ago or in the right direction or some other explanation like that.  It's about what you'd hear from a White House managing a bad message.  And then mom goes to the grocery store and comes home shaking her head and looking at the bill.  This is when inflation goes from being a news story to a family conversation.

Treasury just dropped a financial bomb, but Bidenomics means the worst is yet to come.  With all the chaos and heartbreaking loss of life around the world today, few noticed the Treasury Department drop a financial bomb:  The deficit for fiscal year 2023 was $1.7 trillion, growing 23 percent in a single year as the Treasury used $879 billion just to service the federal debt.  But "Bidenomics" means the worst is yet to come, and multi-trillion-dollar deficits are the new normal.  The impetus for these massive deficits is federal government spending, which tipped the scales at $6.1 trillion last year.  Government receipts, meanwhile, were $4.4 trillion, woefully short of the $5 trillion previously forecasted.  A slowing economy and counterproductive tax increases were key drivers behind the $457 billion drop in receipts from the prior fiscal year.

Yellen: Rising Cost of Debt Is Due to Strong Economy, Not Large Deficit.  During an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that the rise in Treasury yields that increases the cost of the U.S. government borrowing money isn't largely connected to the deficit, but is largely "a reflection of the resilience that people are seeing in the U.S. economy that we're not having a recession, that consumer spending and demand continue to be strong, the economy is continuing to show tremendous robustness."

How Did Biden Manage To Lose $300 Billion?  Friday afternoon, the Treasury Department reported that, despite a growing economy and low unemployment, the federal deficit shot up by $320 billion in fiscal year 2023.  That's unusual.  But what's really bizarre is why the deficit exploded.  According to the report, overall spending actually dropped by 2% compared with 2022 as the COVID-19 spending splurge abated.  What drove up the deficit this year was a sudden and completely unexpected 9% drop in tax revenues.  Not only did revenues come up hundreds of billions lower than last year, but they were well below what everybody expected them to be.  At the start of the year, the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget projected revenues for fiscal 2023 at around $4.7 trillion.  The Congressional Budget Office figured it would be $4.8 trillion.  The actual amount:  $4.4 trillion.  In other words, there's between $300 billion and $400 billion worth of missing tax revenues.

Proposition HH Bait and Switch — Colorado Style.  TABOR, or the "Taxpayer's Bill of Rights", approved in 1992, is a check on profligate state government spending, limiting how much Colorado can retain and spend, tied to inflation and population growth, common sense limits on spending.  Excess funds are returned to taxpayers each year.  Now for the switch.  Passing Prop HH would take the TABOR refund Colorado taxpayers would receive and use a portion to reduce property taxes.  That would be like the IRS taking your refund and using it to pay for a new tax increase.  You are still paying for the tax increase using your own money, just taking it from a different pocket.

The Nobel Foundation Should Ask Paul Krugman For Its Award Back.  'The war on inflation is over," wrote Paul (Nobel Prize-Winning-Economist) Krugman last week in a post on X.  "We won, at very little cost."  The only thing missing was a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner.  But like the unfinished Iraq war that George W. Bush bragged about from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, the inflation battle is far from over.  Krugman's reputation as an economist, on the other hand, should be put in a body bag and shipped to Sweden, along with his Nobel Prize money.  Krugman was mocked for his claim about inflation, and for good reason.  To show how we'd allegedly won the war, he had to strip out food, energy, shelter, and used cars.  In other words — most of the stuff that people spend money on day to day.

I Am All for Calling Joe's Policies 'Bidenomics'.  We're assured that the numbers don't lie, even if the propagandists do.  We should forget our concerns, as everything is going swimmingly.  We just don't recognize it because we don't have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's degree in economics.  Inflation is down.  It's only twice what the Federal Reserve thinks it should be for a healthy economy.  More jobs have been created by Bidenomics than by any other administration in history.  In September, 336,000 jobs were created.  Of course, 22 percent of those new employees are "public servants" living on our taxes.  The remainer are people who've been allowed to go back to work after the pandemic lockdowns — at least until the next election.  After a little tampering with the energy and manufacturing sectors, wages are up, and global warming is down.  Or is it that climate change has changed back?  I forget.  I guess it depends on whether it's snowing or sweltering today.

Clinton's labor secretary is the bad penny that always turns up.  Robert Reich, who once held the Secretary of Labor position under Bill Clinton, [...] conveniently fails to mention that the basic reason the workers are asking for huge wage increases and renegotiations is because Biden's energy and other policies have greatly increased inflation and wage growth hasn't kept up.  For examples, the UAW wants a huge raise (40% over four years which amounts to 46% compounded), pay for 40-hour workweeks despite only putting in 32 hours of work, cost-of-living increases, and "beefed-up" retirement benefits — that will be great for reducing productivity and increasing inflation.  If Reich and other Democrats really cared about real wages and workers, they would have supported Trump's policies of lower taxes, fewer regulations, and energy independence — real wages for everyone, including union workers, were rising rapidly because inflation was low.  But Democrats didn't support those policies.  They sought to disrupt and destroy Trump every day.

Our Establishment's Alternate Realities.  One common denominator that explains why previously successful societies implode is their descent into fantasies.  A collective denial prevents even discussion of existential threats and their solutions. [...] Biden apparently has reversed course and begun using the former pejorative "Bidenomics" as a term of pride.  He now praises this three-year effort to borrow $6-7 trillion, and spike interest rates threefold to 7% on home mortgages — even as prices on essentials like food and fuel have spiked 25-30% since he entered office.  The more that Biden brags about what he did to the economy, the more people poll — over 60% — dissatisfaction with his alternate reality of "Bidenomics."

Kevin McCarthy and the Political Culture.  There are at least two narratives that Republican and Democrat elite spin in a way that inflicts massive harm upon the public:  1) national debt and 2) illegal immigration.  In the pathological storytelling of our intellectual culture, the national debt is simply a timeless unfortunate burden of being a global superpower and fulfilling obvious moral duties such as child care, feeding the hungry, and medical care.  In reality, the United States ran a surplus as recently as 1999 and 2000.  In 2007, the deficit was a mere $160 billion compared to $2 trillion today.  Moreover, taxpayers will provide roughly five trillion dollars in annual revenue to meet the wide array of national needs.  This is 25% larger than the entire expense structure of the Chinese Communist government serving more than one billion people.  Especially important in the reality check is the massive growth in revenue the USFG has experienced in the past 30 years.  The federal government is definitely overspending and the debt and deficit are caused by reckless spending and not by economic cycles, tax cuts, COVID, unexpected emergencies, or a myriad of excuses.

Please Stop Telling Us Everything Is Fine With the Economy.  Two weeks ago, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman told CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour there is a peculiar disconnect between how the economy is doing and how the public is feeling about it. [...] People think the economy is bad because they are paying, at least here in western Pennsylvania, $3.99 a gallon for gas, and in places such as Arizona, where the state now ranks seventh among the nation's highest-paying markets at $4.69; last week alone it climbed 14 cents a gallon.  In Nevada, it jumped a whopping 33 cents a gallon, with California coming in at a 29-cents-a-gallon jump.  When gas prices rise, food prices rise.

As Stagflation Fears Mount, Dems Urge Biden To Stop Bragging About 'Bidenomics'.  In the three months since President Joe Biden decided to campaign on the glories of "Bidenomics," inflation started creeping back up, the unemployment rate rose, and his approval ratings on the economy have steadily dropped.  Now, stagflation is back in the news.  All of it is leading Democrats to urge Biden to shift his messaging.  Stagflation — the combination of rising inflation, high unemployment, and a stagnant economy not seen since the disastrous Jimmy Carter years — is suddenly in the headlines.  On Friday, for example, CNBC ran a story: "Stagflation is 'the big bogeyman out there' — and many increasingly fear its return."  The story pointed out that with oil prices climbing "the specter of higher-for-longer inflation have reignited concern about stagflation risks."

The Editor says...
Joe Biden reads whatever comes up on the teleprompter, to the best of his limited ability.  If you want him to change his message, you have to tell somebody other than Joe Biden.

How Government Spending Causes Inflation.  The federal government, under both parties, has printed trillions of dollars to fund its "stimulus" packages and other projects.  This spending greatly increased during the COVID era.  Basic economics teaches that the government printing press is not only the cause, but the very definition of inflation.  Over the past 30+ months, prices of all consumer goods have risen dramatically.  Real estate has achieved similar highs.  Prices have appeared to stabilize only after action by the Federal Reserve system to restrict the money supply.  The supply of money has been the key both to inflation and to its temporary taming.  Of course, raising interest rates is not the real solution.  Only the end of government printing would stop inflation.  Government and its media operatives have, as usual, attempted to confuse the issue.

Joe Biden Makes a Series of Insane Claims in a Speech, and No One Is Buying Them.  [Scroll down]  Biden bragging about reducing the deficit is like a gambling addict losing their house and bragging that they don't have to pay the mortgage anymore.  The United States government is currently on pace to have an over $2 trillion deficit for the current year, and it'd be even higher if Republicans hadn't forced some barely-there spending freezes during the last spending battle.  Have deficits technically fallen from their peak during the Biden administration?  Yes, but that's because the president ran up the deficit in 2021 to eye-watering levels with an infrastructure bill and the American Rescue Act, both of which have been complete boondoggles.  There was a time in the not-to-distant past when a $1 trillion deficit was a historic high.  For Biden to try to take credit for "lowering" the deficit to $2 trillion is crazy.

'Emergency' Spending.  Did you survive the budget cuts from the last debt ceiling fight?  President Joe Biden called them "draconian," while Republicans praised the deal's "historic reductions in spending."  But both parties conned us, as my new video explains.  What they call "cuts" were just a reduction in their planned spending increase.  Instead of raising spending by 7.8%, they increased it by "only" 3.9%.  Only politicians get to call an increase a cut.  Biden praised the deal, saying, "We're cutting spending and bringing the deficits down at the same time!"  But they didn't.  Now they're using tricks to spend even more.  "Call it an emergency — done," says Cato Institute budget specialist Romina Boccia.  "Spend the money on whatever you want."  Boccia reports how the Senate is moving to increase spending beyond the agreed-upon caps simply by calling it "emergency" spending.  "They gave $296 million to NASA for 'emergency infrastructure.'"

To Market, to Market.  Among the factors weighing heavily on public disaffection with Democratic governance is the downturn occasioned by their policies, which hamper production, raise prices, and allow widespread retail theft.  Robert Barnes has done the math: "Under #Trump, real median family household incomes rose 15% in just 3 years, the highest rate since after World War 2.  Under #Biden, real median family household incomes fell 5% in just 3 years, the fastest rate of decline since the Great Depression."  To be sure, the bien pensant big thinkers don't see this as a problem.  The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman offers up a defense — essentially, voters shouldn't believe their lying eyes.  "The economic data have been just surreally good.  Even optimists are just stunned," says Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.

Why is America so broke?  The public is constantly told that when Congress passes new spending programs, they will be paid for... yet the U.S. is over $32 trillion in debt, not counting unfunded liabilities like Social Security, Medicare, and federal employee benefits.  When Democrats passed Obamacare, they said it would substantially lower premiums and it would reduce the deficit; instead, premiums skyrocketed, so the subsidies and other costs had to skyrocket.  One way Democrats pretended that they would be able to pay for Obamacare without the taxpayer feeling it was that they said the government would make money if they took over student loans.  They lied.

How we stopped inflation without a recession (hint: by not stopping inflation).  The inflation crisis is over.  Or is it?  This morning a reader sent along an interesting analysis of Thursday's supposedly positive inflation report showing that prices in July rose 3.2 percent annually - and an even more interesting chart.  First a little background.  That 3.2 percent number is "headline" or overall inflation.  That headline annual figure peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022 and has since fallen sharply.  Thus the growing consensus that inflation is back in check.  But the "core" inflation rate tells a less optimistic story than the headline number.  Unlike overall inflation, the core inflation rate excludes changes in food and energy prices, which can move quickly.  It is less volatile than the overall inflation rate.

Bidenomics: Food prices went up 4.9% in July.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on Thursday.  It shows that the price of food went up 4.9% in July.  Call it Bidenomics or Bidenflation.  Neither one is good.  Team Biden is desperately trying to convince Americans that Bidenomics is working.  Joe Biden and Democrats blew up the U.S. economy by spending us into oblivion.  Inflation rose to historic levels, interest rates exploded, the supply chain was very slow to make a comeback, energy prices rose, and the price of food packed a wallop on family budgets.  A majority of Americans think the country is going in the wrong direction.  The Consumer Price Index shows inflation ticked up over the last year and remains more than double what it was when Biden took office.  Think of that when Biden brags that inflation is coming down.  His administration's policies blew up the inflation rate and now he wants credit for bringing it down a bit.  When Biden spoke about the report on Thursday morning, he cherry picked information and didn't mention the uptick in the annual inflation rate.  He simply said the report "shows that our economy remains strong."  Thanks, Joe.

Welcome To Biden's Grand Illusion Of Prosperity.  "You know, if you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give you an illusion of prosperity, too."  That was then-Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen back in 1988 arguing that the Reagan boom was a myth because it was bought and paid for with deficit spending, then running about $200 billion a year.  What would Bentsen say today about an economy that — instead of blasting ahead at more than 4% a year at it was in 1988 — is barely eking out gains and appears headed to a downturn[,] despite the fact that President Joe Biden is writing $200 billion in hot checks every two months.  We know what Biden and his legions of sycophants in the "independent" media would say.  The economy is doing great thanks to "Bidenomics."

10 Signs That The Mainstream Media Is Not Telling You The Truth About The Economy.  [#1] When the economy is doing well, there is a tremendous demand for trucking.  But when the economy is tanking, trucking companies often get into serious trouble.  So it is a very bad sign that "one of the country's oldest and largest trucking businesses" is literally on the brink of collapse. [...] [#6] Electric vehicles were supposed to be the wave of the future, but Ford is going to lose 4.5 billion dollars on electric vehicles this year alone. [...] [#10] According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of announced job cuts in the United States during the first half of this year was 244 percent higher than the number of announced job cuts during the first half of last year.

4 Images Reveal How Congress Is Committing an $11 Billion Fraud on American Public.  Perhaps the single biggest legislative fight this year has been over federal spending.  There's a good reason for that:  The national debt is now an eye-popping $32.5 trillion (roughly $250,000 per household), and out-of-control deficit spending is one of the main reasons why families are struggling with inflation.  In May, Congress passed a bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for reforms that would supposedly reduce spending levels.  Some parts of the deal were good, but as we learn more about the details of the package, it looks more and more like a raw deal for current and future taxpayers.  Rather than simply living with lower spending levels, Congress is going to extreme lengths to hide spending within the limits.

What Exactly Is 'Bidenomics,' and Is the President Actually Serious About Running On It?  Biden wants to take credit for an improving economy — an economy he wrecked in the first place.  He wants to claim authorship of a drop in inflation — inflation caused by his massively irresponsible $5 trillion in federal spending.  And as Fox News points out, only the rate of inflation has fallen.  Actual prices will probably never come down.  Biden did nothing to bring inflation down.  It was the Federal Reserve jacking up interest rates that has begun to cool off the overheated Biden economy.  Biden also is taking credit for a $1.7 trillion reduction in the federal deficit — a claim that the Washington Post calls "highly misleading."  The president is also proud of "creating" 13 million new jobs — despite almost all of them being jobs lost during the totally unnecessary shutdown of the economy.

Still More Evidence That Bidenomics Is 'Working'.  Thirteen days after President Joe Biden told the nation that "Bidenomics is working," the Congressional Budget Office released a report showing just how well it's working — bankrupting the country far faster than anyone expected.  The report looks at spending and revenues for the first nine months of this fiscal year, which started in October.  What it reveals is remarkable, both because it shows how reckless the Biden administration has been with spending and how it's sapped the economy of strength.  The topline number is that the federal deficit so far this fiscal year has already topped $1.4 trillion, which is $875 billion higher than the same months last year and bigger than the deficit for all of fiscal year 2022.  The CBO finds that overall spending this year is running 10% higher than last year.  At the same time, revenues are down 11% compared with last year, which defies claims by the administration that the economy is strong.

Tech Companies Have Laid Off More Than 219,000 Workers In 2023.  If you want to believe that propaganda that is coming from the Biden administration, you probably won't want to read this article.  Joe Biden insists that "Bidenomics" is working and that a wonderful new era of peace and prosperity is just around the corner.  Meanwhile, inflation is out of control, homelessness is rising to very frightening levels, the commercial real estate market is imploding, and large companies are conducting mass layoffs all over America.  In fact, tech companies have already laid off more workers in 2023 than they did all of last year[.]

Bidenflation At 16.0% Highlights Bidenomics Failure.  Bidenomics is a complete and utter failure that has led to stagflation in the United States.  No amount of sugarcoating can hide the truth.  Americans are struggling with high prices.  You need $1,000 in earnings today to buy what $862 could buy when Biden took office.  Alternatively, if you needed $50K yearly for household expenses before Biden took office, you now need $58K.  The Consumer Price Index (CPI) released by the government last Wednesday showed a 3.0% year-over-year increase in prices from June 2022 to June 2023, declining from a rate of 4.0% in May, 4.9% in April, 5.0% in March, and 6.0% in February.

Biden is fact-checked by Twitter for wrongly boasting that real wages are higher than before the pandemic because of 'Bidenomics'.  As team Biden looks to capitalize on improving economic figures and leans into 'Bidenomics', Elon Musk's Twitter added a fact-check note to the president's Sunday tweet about improving real wages.  It accused President Joe Biden of making a 'factual error' with his claim that real wages were now higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.  Data flagged by Twitter users showed that real wages — adjusted for inflation — were higher at the end of March 2020 than now.

'Bidenomics' in layman's terms is foreign corruption and government control.  The media and other Democrats disparage trickle-down economics, but apparently they're big believers in what they're calling "Bidenomics." [...] Democrat policies are striving towards socialism while not calling it socialism, because socialism has never worked, and socialist ideations like the Soviet gulags aren't exactly popular with mature Americans.  Essentially, Biden and the rest of the reigning Democrats consider the best economic plan to be one where they confiscate as much as they can for the government, keep a lot for themselves and a massive number of bureaucrats, maybe sell some state secrets, and then trickle out the remainder to special interest groups, like green fanatics and others, in order to buy votes.  They pretend that all the handouts, to keep more people dependent on the government, are free.

If Biden's Economic Plan Is 'Working,' Why Are Tax Revenues Plunging?  President Joe Biden loves to brag about the masterful job he's doing managing the nation's economy, as he did on Tuesday when cheering the latest inflation news — which saw food prices up almost 7% from last year — and "our historic economic progress."  The day before that, the Treasury Department released its monthly financial statement, which shows that the federal deficit for this fiscal year has already topped $1 trillion and that's a big factor behind this is a sharp reduction in federal tax revenues from last year.  Wait, you say.  If the economy is "strong" and "historic" as Biden claims, why are revenues cratering and deficits exploding?

White House Brags About Chart Showing Inflation Skyrocketed After Biden Took Office.  The White House was dragged on Tuesday for tweeting a chart that showed inflation is lower than it was last summer — even though the chart also showed that inflation had skyrocketed after President Joe Biden was sworn in.  In the post, the White House celebrated inflation reaching 4%, the lowest rate since March 2021, claiming the lower rate "is giving families real breathing room."  The chart may have not been the clear victory sign the Biden administration was going for, though, as it showed the massive increase in inflation from January 2021 to May 2022 when it reached 9% under the current president's watch.

Radio Free America.  [Scroll down]  Progressives and Democrats refuse to connect wasteful and extravagant government spending with inflation, but that's the driving cause.  There is no free lunch, but the left would have you believe otherwise.  Devastating inflation leaves many struggling to put away something for retirement or a rainy day.  Starkly higher interest costs hit regular Americans hard each month.  Americans carry a huge debt burden, much of which is not at fixed interest rates.  These rates have increased precipitously, and Americans borrow money to maintain their lifestyles in this economic quicksand.

'Debt default' and 'government spending' are misdirection.  When the Federal Reserve started printing dollars (called quantitative easing or Q.E.) in 2008, they used that $8 trillion of new money to expand federal spending and thereby put every working citizen into debt.  After all, we have to pay for federal spending through our taxes.  Did they not know that this debt would eventually have to be repaid?  Or did they just not care?  After all, these politicians and bureaucrats put us into debt and, until now, don't pay the price for their malfeasance.  After the windfall, our government officials proceeded to spend all the money they borrowed (through issuance of Treasury Bonds) on government programs like entitlements and welfare — basically paying some people not to work, using our personal debt obligation (Treasury Bonds) to get re-elected.  Consider the moral implications in every aspect of this theft.  Every tax-paying citizen is burdened with massive debt that he did not want.  Then politicians and bureaucrats get to spend your money to pay other people not to work.  In this scheme, politicians tax and take to get re-elected.

The True Threat of Debt Default.  Our elected politicians have the country on an extended glide path to sovereign debt default.  Growing our economy at a faster rate than government accrues debt, making our debt relatively smaller, seems problematic.  Government growth, consuming resources, is out of control.  Regulatory overreach is unprecedented.  Tax cuts are anathema to the Uniparty.  Costs of electricity are rising with ruinous energy policies transitioning from affordable, reliable fossil fuels onto unreliable, destabilizing wind and solar.  The window is closing rapidly to balance the budget.  At some point, the nondiscretionary spending of the Ponzi scheme called Social Security, the military, and debt interest payments lead to exorbitant deficits that even the Uniparty can recognize.  About one decade is left to balance the budget by eliminating discretionary programs, after which Social Security deficits must be funded through general budgets.

Our Fake Spending Debates.  This week, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and President Joe Biden cut a deal to raise the debt limit.  The breakthrough came after three months of Biden pledging not to even negotiate over the debt limit.  Instead, Biden was forced to concede to a 1% cap on increases for non-military spending, a cutback on IRS funding, a clawback of some unspent COVID-19 allocations, and addition of work requirements for some federal aid.

Government by slush fund.  The U.S. General Fund, also called the Treasury General Account (TGA), pays the expenses and expenditures of all federal entities.  The payments are cash transfers made by the New York Fed at the direction of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service in the Department of Treasury.  In 2020 (according to he U.S. Fiscal Calendar), the TGA reported paying out twenty-one Trillion eight-hundred-billion dollars, which is greater than the Gross Domestic Product for the year, and more than three times the total assets of the Federal Reserve at the end of this period.  Total government outlays were reported as six-trillion six-hundred-billion dollars, a fraction of the above, and of which, shockingly, almost half was deficit spending.  On its face, the inferiority of government spending to TGA payments is not unexpected, as the major activity of the TGA results from the borrowing and partial repayment of debt.  The Fiscal Service in the Treasury is required to publish an annual report on the financial condition of the General Fund audited by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).  This audit has failed repeatedly.  When the outcome of an audit is a disclaimer of opinion by the accountants, that means that the account presented has failed its audit.

The Fed Is Broke And It's Cooking The Books.  Behind closed doors, the report is already making the rounds in expert circles: if you follow the rules of sound commercial accounting, the United States Federal Reserve (Fed) has lost its equity and is, as common language would have it, bankrupt.  What happened? [...] The Fed currently holds around $8.5 trillion in debt securities on its balance sheet.  A price drop of just, let's say, 5 percent on this debt portfolio would result in an accounting loss (an "unrealized loss") of $425 billion, reducing the Fed's equity capital by the same amount.  (It should be noted here that if the Fed held the securities to maturity and the borrowers repaid them in full, the accounting loss would disappear by maturity.)  Any conventional company would be in dire straits under these circumstances. (By the way, failing to report a loss would be a punishable offense in many countries.)  However, the Fed, like any other central bank, is not a conventional company.  Rather, it has the state monopoly of money production, which makes it truly special.

Janet Yellen says the U.S. economy is 'obviously performing exceptionally well'.  Inflation is kicking back up.  The dollar is falling.  People are pulling money out of even big banks now and buying gold.  The dollar is losing its reserve status.  Discouraged workers are dropping out of the workforce.  Layoffs are coming.  And recession is "baked in the cake."  [Tweet]  But don't tell Janet Yellen, Joe Biden's Treasury secretary.  Out on Planet Biden, the nutty professor is telling us the economy is in good shape.

Biden Tweets Out Absurd "Fair Share" Tax Claim.  Joe Biden's utter lack of economic knowledge was on full display Saturday and Twitter CEO Elon Musk thoroughly humiliated him in the process.  Biden sent out a tweet claiming that billionaires do not pay their "fair share" in taxes.  To resolve this, he demanded a minimum 25% tax rate on billionaires. [...] Musk quickly jumped on this nonsense.  He pointed out that he paid a combined 53 percent tax on Tesla stock options at both the state and federal level.  He also added that he paid more taxes than any person on Earth in 2021 and will likely do so again in 2022.  Musk back in 2021 paid a whopping $11 billion in taxes[.]

Janet Yellen [was] Called out for Lying During Hearing Before Senate Finance Committee.  Biden Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen faced the gauntlet before the Senate Finance Committee on three very hot topics: the "not a bailout" bailout (as our sister site Townhall termed it) of a couple of banks that collapsed, her ignorant approach to inflation, and the Biden failure to address the debt ceiling and duck negotiation.  The questioning of Yellen revealed a window into why the Biden administration is just so clueless.  The people they have in these positions have no idea what they are doing, from the top with Joe Biden, through Janet Yellen, on down to the flunky Kamala Harris staffer who didn't know to open the flue on the fireplace in the White House before lighting it up.  Yellen said that no taxpayer money was being used to bail out the two banks.  [Tweet]

This Is Good Inflation News?  Not If You Need Food, Heat, Or A Place To Live.  OK, sure, that 6% year-over-year bump is still three times the average inflation for the past three decades.  And sure, it comes on top of the 7.9% jump in prices in February 2022.  And, yes, it means that the Consumer Price Index has now risen 15% in the short time Biden has been in office.  But fear not!  Because Biden is on top of the situation, and his "inflation reduction act" is clearly working.  Right?  The problem with the focus on the overall CPI — which measures cost changes in a "basket of goods" — is that people aren't buying this basket every month.  Most are just trying to make ends meet.  They're trying to feed their families.  Keep the lights on.  Avoid eviction.  For these people — which is most people — inflation hasn't moderated.  It is far, far worse than the overall number suggests.

The debt and the deficit: Where are we really?  Unbelievably, President Biden stated last month in his State of the Union address that the deficit has decreased.  Here's what Biden said:  "In the last two years, my administration has cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history."  Wow!  This is excellent news, that the federal government is in better shape.  But is it? [...] Here's a more accurate restatement of what President Biden said:  "In the last two years, my administration has cut the increase in the debt by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest reduction in the debt increase in American history."

Voters are smarter than Biden thinks.  Pick almost any poll over the past decade and you'll find that voters always cite the economy as their top issue.  Depending on the survey, the economy issue is also often more broadly defined in surveys as "jobs," and, in the past couple of years, as "inflation."  But, however you look at the issue of the economy, we're seeing a subtle change in how people process the constant flow of economic data that bombards them every day.  They are becoming more educated and more sophisticated on federal fiscal issues and how they impact their own economic futures.  More leery of politicians spouting data points that clash with the reality of their own personal "economies."  Less trusting of economic happy talk, when 60 percent of them are living paycheck to paycheck as inflation continues to outpace wages.

Inflationary Gaslighting — Fed Chair Says Interest Rates "likely to be higher than previously expected".  Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivers testimony today before the Senate Banking and Finance Committee.  During his statements Powell says, "The latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated."  Powell continued, "If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes." ... "We will continue to make our decisions meeting by meeting." ... "Although inflation has been moderating in recent months, the process of getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy."  Everything about the testimony to the Senate, and almost everything within the questioning as presented, ignores the key and central component that inflation is being driven by energy policy.  The scale of the pretending around this issue is jaw dropping.

Widespread public distrust in media baffles mainstream pundits.  For over two years, the mainstream media has regurgitated Biden administration talking points about how great leftist economic policies are, and find themselves "confused" as to why the public just doesn't believe them. [...] Maybe the people are finding that their take home pay is no longer sufficient to cover even the most basic standard of living, because of high inflation.  Maybe they see that their savings are depleted, and that their credit card debt is skyrocketing.  Maybe they're realizing that they can't afford to buy a home.  While the Biden administration brags about how well the economy is doing, these stooges also say that college graduates can't afford to pay off their loans — even after a three-year moratorium.

Your City Government Is Likely Cooking the Books, Watchdog Group Says.  "If you live in one of America's biggest cities, it's likely your municipal government cooks the books, overestimating money coming in and undercounting bills.  Truth in Accounting (TIA) released its latest report, "Financial State of the Cities 2023," earlier this month.  New York is the worst city, but Boston and Philadelphia also received failing grades.  Many cities mislead taxpayers, TIA watchdogs say.  "What we find is they take their books and they hide the true cost of government by not putting all their compensation costs in their budgets," said Sheila Weinberg, a certified public accountant and TIA founder.

The CBO Exposes Biden's $5.45 Trillion Lie.  While spending the country into ruin, President Joe Biden likes to portray himself as a fiscal conservative who has cut the deficit in half in the past two years.  But a new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office shows just how big a lie this is — a 5 1/2 trillion dollar lie, to be exact.  During his State of the Union speech last week, Biden not only claimed that "my administration has cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history," he also claimed that he's a miser compared to Donald Trump.  "Under the previous administration, the American deficit went up four years in a row. ... Nearly 25% of the entire national debt that took over 200 years to accumulate was added by just one administration alone — the last one," he said.

The Editor says...
This is another indication that Barack H. Obama is conducting his third term in office, with Joe Biden serving as Obama's puppet.  When Obama was president, he routinely blamed every unfortunate circumstance on George W. Bush for years after Bush was out of the loop.  Now Biden/Obama is doing the same thing, blaming Donald Trump.

Don't Fall For Joe Biden's Economic Fairy Tale.  Presidents are often unduly blamed or given credit for economic events beyond their control.  But it is no accident inflation took off as Democrats pumped hundreds of billions into a hot economy (in the case of the "infrastructure" bill, with the help of Senate Republicans) and aggravated foreseeable problems with policies that disincentivize work and undercut energy production.  All this led to the biggest inflation spike since 1982.  We are still at historic highs.  A slew of products that consumers rely on still remain atypically expensive, and fears of additional price hikes have started to seriously corrode consumer confidence.  Biden lied that "25 percent" of the national federal debt was incurred by the previous administration when most of that debt was driven by entitlement programs passed, expanded, and revered by Democrats.  And he misled the nation by claiming that his administration had "cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history," when, in fact, those "cuts" were sunsetting pandemic emergency spending that Democrats had complained wasn't enough.

Good luck qualifying for that tax break Joe Biden is touting on that EV he wants you to buy.  Just yesterday, Joe Biden's official Twitter account posted that the great American road trip is going to be fully electrified and that citizens can receive a tax credit of up to $7,500 for a new electric vehicle (EV).  Along with the message was a photo of Biden driving a GMC Hummer EV. [...] We dig deeper.  Does Biden's Hummer EV qualify for the scheme?  The $7,500 credit scheme is applicable to new vans, sport utility vehicles, and pickup trucks that cost $80,000 or less.  The GMC Hummer EV costs between $87,000 and $110,000, hence doesn't qualify for the credits. [...] The average cost of an EV is roughly $66,000, which means few vehicles qualify for the scheme.  Some vehicles listed on the IRS website as potentially eligible for credit actually fail to qualify because they are expensive.  Another problem is that there isn't an explicit definition regarding which vehicle is subject to that $55,000 cap and which vehicle is subject to a $80,000 cap.  The IRS states the categories are based on the criteria for fuel economy for gas-powered vehicles standards, but these classifications seem arbitrary and confusing.  There were other problems with the information on the IRS website.  The plug-in hybrid Ford Escape was listed as having an $80,000 price cap for more than a week before the cap was changed to $55,000.  The Treasury Department claims the original price cap was a typo.  You would have hoped the content on the website was reviewed before publishing.

McCarthy blasts Biden, Schumer over omnibus: They're saying 'there's no waste in government spending'?  House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tore into his Democratic rivals and Republicans who helped pass the omnibus package, saying President Biden appears to believe there is not a cent of waste in current government spending.  On "Life, Liberty & Levin," host Mark Levin asked McCarthy whether the Democrats' playbook for fending off conservative Republicans' calls for budget cuts is to add hundreds of billions of dollars in new debt, then accuse the GOP of trying to shut down the government when they advocate for clawing back some of the new spending.  "That's exactly the trick," McCarthy said.  "But you've got to think about too, who are the senators who wrote it?  Two senators who are no longer here."

Jean-Pierre Makes It Clear She'll Blame Republicans For Economic Downturn Even Though Biden Is President.  When Trump was President, the Democrats credited *Obama* for economic success and blamed *Trump* for any economic turbulence.  Now that Biden is "President", his White House is doing something very similar.  During a press briefing on Wednesday, Karine Jean-Pierre made it clear that she is going to blame *Republicans* for any future economic downturns, such as high gas prices and tumbling 401k's, even though Joe Biden is the one in the White House.  Yes, really.  "They're [Republicans] threatening to kill millions of jobs and 401k plans by trying to hold the debt limit hostage," Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday.

"This Changes Everything".  The unveiling of the new Northrup Grumman B-21 "Raider" long-range bomber, with its stealthy design, app-style updates, and $2 Billion price tag, was pure Hollywood.  If you want to watch it, the CEO begins her spiel at minute 39.  B-21 technology is capped at 2010 standards; it flies with F-35 engines.  The planes (two have been built) will fly for the first time this spring — 18 months behind schedule.  These real secrets were not unveiled yesterday, nor was how much the US taxpayer has paid and will pay for these bombers.  No doubt, this would have spoiled the fun.  The mantra "This Changes Everything" was repeated several times by several speakers, indicating the opposite must be true  — it changes nothing.

Janet Yellen Says the Real Reason Inflation is Out of Control is Because Americans Are 'Splurging' on Goods.  Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday evening blamed Americans for record-high inflation.  It isn't Joe Biden's fault for spending trillions of dollars in the last year-and-a-half.  It isn't the Democrats' fault for passing trillions in spending through the reconciliation (no GOP votes needed).  The real reason for inflation is because Americans 'splurging' on goods.  "They were in their homes for a year or more, they wanted to buy grills and office furniture, they were working from home, they suddenly started splurging on goods, buying technology," Yellen said on Stephen Colbert's late night show.

Don't Be Fooled by October's Decrease in the Rate of Inflation.  October's Consumer Price Index, the measure of the national rate of inflation, was at 7.7 percent in October, compared to a reading of 8.2 percent in September.  The report propelled "U.S. stocks forward [at the open] and sent Treasury yields tumbling as Wall Street weighed the implication of softer prints on Federal Reserve policy."  The decline in the rate of inflation was driven by declining annual prices of "necessities" such as smartphones (-22.9 percent), admission to sporting events (-17.7 percent), televisions (-16.5 percent), and women's outerwear (-1.4 percent), all items that are discretionary purchases.  Unless you can eat your smartphone, this didn't help you very much as a consumer, as the components of the CPI that showed the most inflation were "needs," those items that we need to purchase in order to live.

The Editor says...
Any favorable news about the economy that comes out a few weeks before a mid-term election should be received with great skepticism; for indeed, it is very likely to be negated by a "revision" a few weeks later.

Wait, This Is The Inflation News Everyone Is Celebrating?  The moment the government's inflation number came out last Thursday, the stock market rocketed upward.  President Joe Biden took a victory lap.  It was less than expected!  Inflation is cooling off!  Sounds wonderful.  Except that prices rose in October by almost 8% year-over-year.  That's four times faster than the Federal Reserve Bank's 2% target rate.  And it marks the 20th consecutive month since inflation has been above the Fed's target.  It also comes on top of previous record-level price hikes.

Why suburban women are flocking to the GOP: As simple as A,B,C.  When people complain about taxes, the usual response is something along the lines of "what, you don't want police and schools?"  Of course, as my father-in-law once said, when they raise taxes they tell you it's for teachers and police, but when they get the money it goes to buy a fancy leather chair for some guy you never heard of in an office downtown.  But if you're going to justify the whole of government by invoking police and schools, maybe it would be a good idea to ... actually provide police and schools.  And Democrats across the nation went out of their way not to deliver either.

White House deletes 'flagged' tweet crediting Biden for Social Security pay increase.  On Wednesday, the White House was humiliated once again when it was forced to delete a tweet that had credited "President Biden's leadership" for the bump in Social Security payments after being flagged by Twitter as being inaccurate.  The increase in Social Security checks is actually due to a 40-year high in inflation, which ironically, Biden is responsible for.  "Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden's leadership," the White House fibbed on Twitter Tuesday.  The original tweet was flagged on Twitter noting that many readers were adding "context" to it.  The White House did not say why the tweet was deleted but it was definitely noticed.

Biden's Energy 'Windfall' Tax Is Election Theater For Economic Illiterates.  President Joe Biden has accused oil companies of "war profiteering" and is threatening to impose a windfall tax if they fail to boost domestic production — and improve the Democrats' fortunes in the 2022 midterms.  It is ugly political theater.  Demanding private entities act on behalf of the party or face punishment from the state, as the president might say, is semi-fascisty behavior.  Other than appealing to the anger and frustrations of economic illiterates, windfall taxes (a tax on allegedly excessive, or unfairly obtained, profits) make zero sense.  They neither bring down the price of energy nor increase supply.  All windfall taxes do is disincentivize oil producers — their business already facing an existential threat from Democrats — from investing in long-term production.  And, as with all corporate taxes and regulations, the cost will be passed to the consumer.

Yellen claims she sees no signs of recession despite two periods of negative growth and soaring inflation.  Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made the unbelievable claim on CNN that she sees absolutely no signs of a recession despite raging inflation, two consecutive periods of negative growth, and a flailing stock market.  Spewing propaganda obviously directed by the Biden administration, Yellen had the nerve to tell Americans on Thursday to not believe their eyes or their bank accounts and to instead believe what leftists are telling them no matter how outrageous or ridiculous.  Two plus two equals five after all.

Obama Propaganda.  Netflix is paying Barack and Michelle Obama millions of dollars to produce shows for them.  The latest Obama documentary series is "The G Word."  "G" for government.  As Netflix documentaries go, this one is remarkably stupid.  It's big-government propaganda.  Obama begins by claiming that he does his own income taxes, saying, "It's actually easy."  I think he's joking, but it's not clear.  "I'm amazing at them," Obama continues hours later.  "You can be, too, if you use the helpful tools found at IRS.gov."  But that's just silly.  It's so complex that millions of us pay to get help. [...] For three hours, Obama and his sidekick say government should do more.  Whatever the problem, their answer is always more government and more money.

Biden claims inflation 'averaged 2%' — after data shows 8.2% annual jump.  President Biden tried to fudge the numbers Thursday after newly released data revealed that consumer prices jumped by 8.2% year-over-year last month — with Biden insisting he's made "progress" and that inflation really is on a 2% trajectory.  "Today's report shows some progress in the fight against higher prices, even as we have more work to do," Biden said in a written statement.  "Inflation over the last three months has averaged 2%, at an annualized rate."  "A lot of people are hurting these days.  But today's report shows, though, some progress," Biden added during a speech in Los Angeles.  "Overall inflation was 2% over the last three months, that's down from 11% over the prior three months.  That's progress," he insisted.

The recession is well underway, and it's more than "slight."
Biden says he doesn't think there will be a recession, if so it will be 'very slight'.  President Joe Biden said he doesn't believe there will be a recession in the near future and if there is, he expects it to be a "slight" economic dip.  "Every six months they say this.  Every six months, they look down the next six months and say what's going to happen," Biden said in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN that was aired Tuesday, referring to recent economic projections by major U.S. banks.  "It hadn't happened yet.  It hadn't... I don't think there will be a recession.  If it is, it'll be a very slight recession.  That is, we'll move down slightly."

The US Economy Is Still Being Artificially Supported By Trillions In COVID Stimulus.  Last week Joe Biden announced that $1 billion in federal grants would be generated for manufacturing, clean energy, farming, biotech and other industries in 21 regional partnerships across the US.  The money is part of a $1.9 trillion covid relief package that was instituted way back in March of 2021.  That's right, if you thought the covid funds were gone for good, you were mistaken.  While certain elements of the original covid stimulus packages have dried up, there are still vast sums of fiat dollars being held in the coffers of various federal and state programs.  The issue of covid stimulus remains a key problem for the US economy for multiple reasons[.]  First and foremost, it was the covid stimulus packages that sent our stagflationary crisis into overdrive.

Surprise! The Economy Is Even Worse Than You Thought.  On Thursday, the Commerce Department released revisions to its estimates of GDP and GDI.  The GDP estimates were unchanged but the GDI estimates for the first half of this year were marked down sharply.  First quarter GDI grew at a 0.8 percent annual rate and second quarter GDI growth was a mere 0.1 percent.  Many economists look to the average of GDI and GDP as a signal for the health of the economy.  Prior to the revisions, that average appeared to imply that the U.S. economy was growing in the first half of the year, supporting the claim that the U.S. economy was not in a recession.  After the revisions, the average of GDI indicates the economy shrank 0.3 percent in the second quarter and 0.4 percent in the first.

Inflation, Shutdowns, and Trending Authoritarianism — Yes, They Are Connected.  Inflation has been summed up as "too much money chasing too few goods."  Some contend that the recent uptick in price inflation is the result of an expansion of the money supply, and they date the start of that expansion back to the Spring of 2020.  That's when the Federal Reserve began pumping trillions of newly-minted Fed dollars into the economy.  The Fed's money printing continued into 2022.  Our current inflation, it would then seem, might just be due to "too much money."  If you recall, the reason for the Fed's massive money-printing was the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic.  The trillions in new money were for the government shutdowns of the economy.  Keep in mind that it was the states that shut down the economy, not the federal government.  No government can deny people their ability to make a living without giving them the means to survive.  Unlike the federal government, the states don't have a central bank that can create money.  But with the $2.2 trillion Cares Act, Congress rode to the rescue and accommodated the states with the money to pay for their shutdowns.  So, the states shut down their economies, Congress backstopped the states, and the Fed provided the money.

NBC's Chuck Todd Laughably Insists More Illegal Aliens Will Solve Inflation.  [Scroll down] Abbott and DeSantis have two primary goals, both of which have worked, masterfully.  First, to demonstrate to Democrat city leaders the serious problem created as the influx of illegals continues to decimate border towns.  Second, and most brilliantly, to illustrate the left's complete hypocrisy when illegals show up on their doorstep.  Such was the case when residents of the upscale liberal enclave of Martha's Vineyard became apoplectic when just 50 illegals showed up on their island, prompting them to ship out the illegals within less than 48 hours.  Sorry, Chuck — try harder, next time.

Grocery Shop With Me To Fact-Check Biden's Inflation Up 'Hardly At All' Claim.  By now you've no doubt heard about President Joe Biden's interview with "60 Minutes" in which he declared the pandemic "over" and said unequivocally that, "yes," the United States will come to Taiwan's defense whenever China attacks.  He also made some dubious claims about inflation.  When CBS interviewer Scott Pelley highlighted the abysmal state of the economy and noted that "people are shocked by their grocery bills," Biden sputtered that the "inflation rate month to month was up just an inch, hardly at all." [...] It's worth clarifying what Biden is trying to claim here.  The inflation rate clocked in at 8.3 percent in August, after registering at 8.5 percent in July and 9.1 percent in June.  When the president says inflation "hasn't spiked" and has "been basically even," he's talking about these fractional changes — and he's hoping you don't know what they mean and that his lapdogs in the corporate media won't explain them to you.  But when we're talking about inflation and how it affects prices, the baseline isn't some-odd 8 percent or whatever the rate happened to be last month.  In other words, we don't measure August's inflation as down 0.2 percentage points from July and 0.8 points from June.  These monthly figures represent year-over-year changes, meaning each report describes how prices that month compare to prices at the same time last year — and they're all up, by a lot.

CBS Economic Gaslighting Example, Face the Nation Pretends Not to Know Joe Biden Energy Policy Driving Higher Prices.  "Gaslighting" is essentially a term used to describe an abuser continually lying to victim in order to make the victim misbelieve reality.  Economic "gaslighting" is a process of lying about the nature of true cause in order to continue advancing the abusive policy.  Combine the economic gaslighting with the historic leftist approach of pretending not to know things, and you get this dynamic on CBS Face the Nation today.  In this brief segment describing inflation, we see all the classic strategies deployed by ideological media.  First, notice they blame:  (1) the pandemic recovery, (2) consumer demand, (3) Ukraine, and (4) a supply chain 'muddle'.  Not only are these issues ridiculous, but none of them are the cause of supply side inflation.  Blaming "consumer demand," which has transparently collapsed for the last year, is beyond nonsense.  Watch, and also pay attention to the graphics they use to manipulate the audience:  [Video clip]

Biden Enters 'Baghdad Bob' Territory on Inflation and Immigration.  We all remember Saddam Hussein's feckless pitchman, "Baghdad Bob."  The country's information minister (real name: Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf) made frequent television appearances, repeating the mantra that everything was going according to plan.  His most memorable appearance came amidst the rubble of his capital city, where he continued to spew delusional nonsense.  We expect such dissembling from dictatorships, which control the media and extinguish discordant voices.  That's what Vladimir Putin is doing right now, hoping to prevent the Russian public from learning his army was demolished by Ukrainian's counteroffensives in Kharkiv (in the northeast) and Kherson (in the south).  Controlling information is essential to regime security.  In democracies, such deceit is much harder to pull off.

The Bidenomics Sham Is Collapsing.  With red lights flashing nearly everywhere, the economy's prospects look grim.  Soaring inflation, crashing home sales, plunging GDP, falling real incomes.  No question, the economy is a mess.  So why is the Biden administration saying things are going better?  It's not just this week's "unexpected" 8.3% inflation jump.  Or the scary plunge in stock prices, destroying trillions of dollars in household wealth in just days.  It's that the ruling party, the Democratic Party, seems utterly oblivious to the damage it's done.  This week, President Joe Biden touted the "progress" made by his administration against inflation, just a day after the report that prices had risen 8.3% overall, and food prices by 11.4%, the fastest since 1979.

Networks Isolate Biden From Blame for 'Disappointing' Inflation Report.  While each took a different approach, the major broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC worked Wednesday [7/14/2022] to isolate President Biden from blame for the pitiful August inflation report showing it came out to 8.3 percent (when the predicted number was 8.1 percent) with energy, food, and rent still soaring.  Instead, some of them trumpeted Biden's "positive spin" and that he's "not worried about" it while one ignored Biden completely.  ABC's Good Morning America co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos opened with a tease warning of "[t]he sharpest one-day stock market loss in two years and the inflation fallout" following "[t]he disappointing new economic report showing prices still climbing more than expected."

FNC's John Roberts: Biden's Celebration Of Inflation Reduction Act Was Like An "Economic Potemkin Village".  [Scroll down] "So what you were talking about at the White House yesterday, with this big celebration for the Inflation Reduction Act, it didn't even escape the view of 'The New York Times,' which wrote in a headline, 'Sobering Inflation Report Dampens Biden's Claims of Economic Progress.  The president is once again trying to accentuate the positives in the recovery from recession, but stubbornly high prices are complicating the message.  The party they threw yesterday on the South Lawn of the White House, it was almost like an economic Potemkin village," Roberts said.

Inflation Rises After Joe Biden Signs 'Inflation Reduction Act' and Prepares White House Celebration.  The White House is planning a celebration of President Joe Biden's "Inflation Reduction Act" on Tuesday, even as consumer prices rose again in August, according to the latest numbers from the federal government.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index released Tuesday morning shows that inflation in August rose one-tenth of a percentage point from July and up 8.3 percent from the previous year.  Grocery prices continue rising fast, as prices rose 0.7 percent from July and 13.5 percent from the previous year.  Restaurant prices are up 0.9 percent from July[.]

White House claims prices 'essentially flat,' throws 'inflation reduction' party as annual rate hovers at 8.3%.  President Biden threw an "inflation reduction" party Tuesday — even as inflation hit a worse-than-expected 8.3%, the stock market tumbled and stubbornly high prices for food and housing continue to slam American households.  Biden, 79, had classic folk rocker James Taylor kick off the White House South Lawn bash with his 1970 hit "Fire and Rain" — a song reportedly about suicide and heroin addiction — to belatedly celebrate passage of his Inflation Reduction Act spending bill.  But Biden, who hailed the 74-year-old Taylor as "a voice that heals our soul and unites a nation," failed to mention the market rout sparked by the dismal Labor Department's Consumer Price Index released earlier Thursday.

We Have Been Thinking about This All Wrong.  For many of us, the path our governmental leaders have recently taken has been perplexing.  Many of the policy decisions that perhaps sounded good (at least to some) have turned out to be not only clearly deleterious, but often catastrophic for our country.  Without hyperbole, I mean catastrophic for our economy, our national defense capability, our national sovereignty, the safety and security of citizens, and our standing among other nations of the world.  We hear that inflation is "temporary," that "we are not in a recession," that the administration "feels our pain" at the gas pump and is making a historic effort to bring down prices (though we should really focus on the fact that we are in an exciting "Great Transition").  Even though our money doesn't go nearly as far as it used to, our economy is in the midst of a "booming recovery."  We are told that a massive new spending bill will somehow reduce inflation — (the "Inflation Reduction Bill").  Even the government's own CBO stated that it will do almost nothing to reduce inflation.  Most economists say it will make inflation much worse.  These statements don't seem to align with empirical evidence — our everyday experience!

Biden Is Winning And Lizzo Is Healthy.  Contrary to what your bank and credit card statements might be telling you, did you know that your personal situation is actually in phenomenal shape, thanks to President Joe Biden's outstanding performance?  I know you're paying almost $1.00 per gallon more for gas than you did last year (for most of the summer it's closer to $2.00 more) and that a loved one may have died from Covid, and also that you're paying more for groceries than you can ever remember.  But you're looking at it all wrong.  Your life has gotten better.  And it's because of Biden.  This, for all the angry Twitter people, is called sarcasm.  Other than Ukrainian government officials, no one is doing well because of Biden.  We're suffering, especially the middle class.

The "Lie of the Year" frontrunner.  It's a bit early for the "Lie of the Year" awards to come out, particularly since we're in a midterm election year and there will be many politicians flapping their gums between now and November.  But at least over at The Hill, they've decided that we need to start narrowing the field a bit. [...] With so many choices to pick from, you might think that they'd have had trouble narrowing this down, but in the end, the choice came down to one claim.  Or more correctly, perhaps we should say one series of claims in a short period of time.  And they stemmed from Biden's recent comments about inflation being at "zero" in July.

Is Anything Manchin Says About His 'Inflation Reduction Act' True?  In a major reversal, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, D-W.V., struck a deal with Senator Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to enact a major climate, entitlement, and tax bill.  This legislation has been praised by President Biden, Al Gore, and other proponents of highly progressive policies.  Dubbed the "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022," Senate Democrats voted to pass this bill only 11 days after releasing its 725 pages of text.  House Democrats followed suit five days later.  Democrats pushed this bill so rapidly through Congress that the Congressional Budget Office estimates it won't be able to "provide a complete cost estimate for the legislation" until more than a week after Congress passed it.

'We had Zero percent inflation': Biden dazed and confused after July 8.5% inflation rate announced.  The Labor Department released the inflation report Wednesday and while any fair-minded person can tell the economy is far from looking up, President Joe Biden has well and truly embraced Orwellian dystopian doublethink and, instead of saying "2+2=5," declared 8.5 equals zero.  While holding a ceremony Wednesday to sign the PACT Act that, in part, addresses the healthcare needs of veterans who suffered illness or injury from exposure to burn pits, Biden attempted to draw a win on the consumer price index (CPI) coming in at 8.5 percent for the month of July.  That number was indeed a drop from the year-to-year metric that marked a 40-year high in June at 9.1 percent, but it was also a far cry from what the president claimed.

Here's the Truth About What 'Inflation Reduction Act' Would Do.  As Senate Democrats achieve their goal of jamming through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, reality is becoming clear:  The bill will likely increase near-term inflation, depress household incomes, and produce the long-term deficits that fuel long-term inflation.  Using the Congressional Budget Office's latest scoring, estimates of the most recent changes, and accounting for very expensive gimmicks, it's likely that the bill will produce deficits.  The cumulative deficit would be around $52.5 billion over the next four years, at least $110 billion through fiscal year 2031, and more beyond.  That would mean adding to near-term and long-term inflationary pressures, in contrast to what proponents such as Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., claim.  In short, the bill is about as far away from a genuine Inflation Reduction Act as possible.  Though it would be harmful under any circumstances, signing it into law during a period of stagflation would be the worst possible timing.

Dems Tell the American People "The Inflation Reduction Act" Won't Raise Taxes.  Democrats love taxes.  The never-ending promise that they won't raise taxes almost always leads to more taxes.  So why should we believe the Inflation Reduction Act won't lead to a hideous tax burden on the American people?  Well, we shouldn't. [...] The Inflation Reduction Act is going to increase taxes on every American income tax bracket, large, or small, regardless of the lies told to us by the Biden administration and the arguments from Democrats that regular Americans will not see their taxes increase under this proposal, according to data from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT).  The cap, we were told, was $400,000.00, but this is not the truth.  This legislation is just the Green New Deal and Build Back Better repackaged into one colossal disaster.

Why We Lost Trust in the Expert Class.  Recently, a group of 55 distinguished pro-administration economists assured us that President Joe Biden's massive borrowing and new entitlements agenda were not inflationary.  In September 2021, these economists with 14 Nobel prize winners among them declared that Biden's inflationary policies would actually "ease" inflation.  Last month, inflation spiked to an annualized rate of 9.1%.  None of these "blue-chip" economists have offered any apologies for lending their prestige to convince Americans of the absurd: that inflating the money supply, spiking new government spending, incentivizing labor non-participation, and keeping interest rates artificially low would not cause inflation.

The 'Inflation Reduction Act' Is A Lie, Pure And Simple.  If Democratic lawmakers had to comply with federal truth-in-advertising laws, they'd all be up on charges for the blatantly false name given to the "Inflation Reduction Act."  President Joe Biden claimed last week that "this bill will, in fact, reduce inflationary pressure on the economy."  In fact, it won't.  It was never meant to.  The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School examined the bill.  Here's what it concluded.  "The impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero."

The Recession That Dare Not Speak Its Name.  Thursday morning [7/28/2022], the Commerce Department admitted what most Americans already knew — the nation is in the midst of a recession.  The economy has contracted for the second consecutive quarter this year.  During the first quarter, gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 1.6 percent, and it shriveled another 0.9 percent during the quarter that just ended.  Thus, the Biden economy now meets the standard benchmark economists have used for decades to define "recession."  Inevitably, the White House, its accomplices in Congress, and the corporate media are again trying to gaslight the voters. [...] But NBER [National Bureau of Economic Research] can take as long as 12 months to officially declare a recession.  As Gerard Baker writes in the Wall Street Journal, "This is like being told by a doctor that you are officially sick a year after your funeral."  Clearly, Biden and the Democrats want to avoid the "r" word before the midterms.

Team Biden's refusal to admit we're in a recession is just another reason Americans don't trust our institutions.  Why don't Americans trust the government and other institutions?  Maybe it's because the government and other institutions aren't trustworthy.  There's certainly plenty of evidence for both the lack of trust and the lack of trustworthiness.  And if the trend continues, it bodes poorly for America.  The news is bad on the lack of trust.  A recent University of Chicago Institute of Politics poll found that a majority of Americans think that the government is "corrupt and rigged against people like me."  Two-thirds of Republicans and independents felt that way, but things weren't much better among liberals, 51% of whom agreed.  So this isn't the usual sour grapes from the party out of power — it's a general sentiment.

Defining Recessions Down:  Biden's Pollyanna Act Won't End Well.  "For the first time in a decade, our economy is in recession.  It's not official yet — the group that dates recessions doesn't act until after the fact — but there's little doubt that we're in the midst of a downturn."  That was economist Jared Bernstein back in December 2001.  He went on:  "The downturn is already taking a toll on those who traditionally bear the brunt of recessions, blue-collar workers in manufacturing, minorities, and other less-advantaged workers."  That year saw only two non-consecutive quarters of GDP decline.  The unemployment rate never got over 5.7%.  And when the year was over, GDP had climbed 1%.  But it's still listed on the recession roster.  Today Bernstein, who sits on President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers, is trying to argue that, despite two consecutive quarters of a shrinking economy, we aren't in a recession right now.

The Democratic Party And How To Avoid A Recession:  Why Didn't We Think Of This Before?  There is a multitude of remedies for digging an economy out of a recession or avoiding an economic recession altogether.  There tends to be, however, a common thread amongst each of these methods.  Since conditions that drive a recession typically emerge over long periods of time, it generally takes a comparable amount of time for our government officials and the Federal Reserve to correct our collective course. [...] But thanks to the Biden Administration there is a new tactic to both avoid sinking into a recession and digging ourselves out of one once we're in it, and it's one whose efficacy is immediately evident.  And the solution is so simple, it was there all along, and we non-Democrats were all just morons for not recognizing the fix from the beginning.  All we must do to avoid or emerge from a recession is this:  Simply change the definition of what it means to be in a recession.  Boom, problem solved!

Republicans Rip Biden White House for Redefining 'Recession' amid Economic Contraction.  Republican officials in the House and Senate ripped into the Biden administration after it attempted to redefine what constitutes a recession while concerns mount about a significant decline in economic activity this year.  On Thursday, ahead of a potentially negative GDP report expected later this week — the annualized economic growth rate shrank by 1.6% in the first quarter of this year and appears to have contracted even more in the second — a White House blog post attempted to redefine the term "recession."

When is a Recession not a Recession?  When The Financial Media Need to Protect Joe Biden.  The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is scheduled to deliver their calculation for the second quarter (Apr, May, June) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on July 28, next week. [...] As with all other highly political institutions in U.S. government, the BEA is driven by political ideology.  With the Biden administration's Green New Deal energy policy driving the U.S. economy into the ground; and with the BEA statisticians worshipping at the same governmental altar as all other climate change ideologues; they will do everything in their power to defend what the people behind Joe Biden are doing. [...] Joe Biden is an avatar; a political pawn; a cognitively declining guy who has no idea what is happening around him.  The people behind the Biden administration, those in real control of what this is about, have not hidden their goals and aspirations.

Biden's Latest Goalpost Adjustment.  Axios reported that White House economic advisors on Thursday moved the goalposts on what a recession is.  The traditional definition of a recession is two or more quarters of economic shrinkage, but the Biden administration argues that "by most measures," according to Axios, "the world's largest economy remains comfortably in expansion mode."  That's why the White House "is seeking to preempt heightened recession chatter that would accompany two quarters of shrinking GDP."  By changing the accepted definition.

White House Press Secretary Claims Current U.S. Status is Best Economy in Our Nation's History.  White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is, at this point, transparently identified as the least qualified and capable person to hold that position in modern history.  She genuinely is lacking the ability to articulate intelligent responses to any questions.  It is also obvious to those who have followed Biden personnel decisions, that KJP was selected because she would spout the information given to her by Chief-of-Staff Ron Klain without a moment's hesitation.  She is not intelligent enough to know the talking points are complete nonsense.  She spouts the most ridiculous talking points in a manner that reflects she believes them.  That said, her capacity to stumble through nonsense and pretend it is real is only surpassed by Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg.

The Mass Psychosis of Liberals.  Liberals have mastered the art of wanting to believe in a false reality, constructing a Bizarro Universe, while at the same time, excusing themselves for committing the very same transgressions against society and nature that they accuse others of doing. [... For example,] The Rich Don't Pay Their "Fair Share":  This one is especially risible, because it's so easily disproved with just the barest minimum of effort.  The top 1% of earners collect 21% of all the income earned in the country, yet they pay an astonishing 40% of all the income taxes paid in America.  As the most ridiculous of Squad members adorns herself in a designer dress costing several thousand dollars brandishing the words "Tax the Rich," she doesn't even realize that the rich already pay far more than their fair share, nor does she make the connection that her congressional salary puts her squarely in the "rich" category she so fervently disparages.

Inflation:  The Price You Pay for Biden's Delusions.  When the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that inflation had risen at an annual rate of 8.3 percent in April, the White House and many news outlets made much of the minuscule decrease from the 8.5 percent rate reported for March.  President Biden issued a statement, for example, that called the infinitesimal decline "heartening."  CNN ran a story titled, "US inflation slowed last month for the first time since August."  This wasn't terribly comforting, however, considering that the inflation rate has nearly doubled since last April while real wages declined by 2.6 percent.  Nor is it "heartening" to see that Biden is still in denial about the role his administration's spending has played in igniting inflation.

Jeff Bezos Ridicules Biden and His 'Disinformation Board'.  Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ridiculed His Fraudulency Joe Biden and his "Disinformation Board" Friday over an absurd tweet about inflation.  A little after six p.m. Friday night [5/13/2022], probably an hour or so after the real Joe Biden had fallen asleep in front of a Murder She Wrote rerun, I'm assuming it was a White House staffer who used Biden's verified Twitter account to spread this ridiculous lie:  "You want to bring down inflation?" the tweet reads.  "Let's make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share."

Inflation proves Biden has done everything wrong all at once.  Our increasingly ugly inflation problem is a perfect illustration of the Biden administration's uncanny ability to get everything everywhere wrong all at once.  The Biden administration's first response to any problem is to pretend that it isn't a problem.  That's how inflation went from a minor problem to a major one.  Unwilling to take the necessary steps to rein in inflation early — pushing the Fed to raise interest rates and slowing down the torrent of money going out the Treasury's doors — Biden and congressional Democrats at first insisted that inflation wasn't a real problem:  "Transitory," they called it.  And then when inflation turned out not to be transitory, they thought they could just pin it on the Russians.  Jen Psaki sniffed smugly at the "Putin price hike," as though Americans were too stupid to understand that inflation at home had started long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  That gambit fizzled, too.

Where is the Disinformation Governance Board when you need it?  Biden's lackeys love to brag about how quickly incomes are rising, but that is an intensely misleading claim.  They advertise a 5.5% raise in income, but that is before it is subject to the never-ending litany of taxes.  When you factor in payroll taxes, federal income taxes, and state income taxes, it is safe to say you reduce that number by 30% (conservatively speaking).  This amounts to a net raise in income of around 4%, which is less than half the current inflation rate of 8.3% — a significantly understated figure, especially for lower and middle class individuals and families.  Also, this "5.5% increase" is not universal — for people who rely on fixed incomes like social security, they are essentially a year behind as it takes awhile for an increase to reflect in their payments.  The next component to consider is the rapid rise in the price of utilities, energy, and food. [...]

CNN fact checker slams Biden's claim that he reduced federal deficit.  CNN's fact checker Daniel Dale pushed back on President Biden's recent claim that his policies had helped to reduce the federal deficit — revealing that one expert told him that the Democrat's assertion was "almost bizarro world" in its misrepresentation of the situation.  "Let me remind you again:  I reduced the federal deficit," Biden said a speech last Wednesday.  "All the talk about the deficit from my Republican friends, I love it.  I've reduced $350 billion in my first year in office."  Biden made the claim while touting his administration's economic track record — despite fierce criticism from Republican lawmakers who argue his policies have contributed to rampant inflation and led the US economy to the brink of a recession.

Carville: Americans Don't Understand How Good the Economy Is Right Now.  Democratic strategist James Carville said Thursday on CNN's "OutFront" that the average American does not understand how good [sic] the U.S. economy is doing.

Americans Aren't Buying Biden's Tale Of Economic Recovery.  The latest Gallup poll released Wednesday revealed that only 2% of Americans think economic conditions are "excellent," while 42% think conditions are "poor."  More than three-quarters of Americans feel that the economy is getting worse, according to polling data.  Four in five adults rate the country as "only fair" (38%) or "poor" (42%).  Seventy-six percent of respondents believe the economy is getting worse, with 20% saying it is improving, and only three percent feeling that it's staying the same.

Biden 'Not Concerned about Recession,' Touts 'Enormous Growth' after Economy Shrinks in First Quarter.  President Biden attempted to allay concerns about the performance of the U.S. economy on Thursday after the Commerce Department announced that the economy shrank over the first quarter of 2022.  "I'm not concerned about a recession," Biden told reporters at a press conference at the White House.  "I mean, you're always concerned about a recession, but the GDP, you know, fell to 1.4 percent," Biden added.  "But here's the deal:  we also had last quarter consumer spending and business investment and residential investment increase at significant rates," and "unemployment's the lowest rate since 1970."  Biden said that the U.S. was seeing "enormous" economic growth alongside Covid disruptions.

Schumer Says the "Only Way" to Reduce Inflation Caused by Biden and Democrats is to Raise Taxes on Americans.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Tuesday said the only way to reduce inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats is to raise taxes on Americans.  Senators Schumer and Manchin discussed a new tax hike and deficit reduction bill as a way to combat inflation. [...] Speaking to reporters, Schumer said getting rid of Trump's tax cuts is the only way to combat inflation.  "If you want to get rid of inflation, the only way to do it is to undo a lot of the Trump tax cuts and raise rates," Schumer said.  "No Republican is ever going to do that, so the only way to get rid of inflation is through reconciliation."

How History Will View the Biden Years.  [Scroll down]  When Biden took office, the first big economic debate was over his nearly $2 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package, the so-called American Rescue Plan.  Coming on the heels of multiple Trump COVID-19 stimulus policies, many leading experts in both parties warned that Biden's spending was going too far.  Overstimulating the economy in this way, they argued, would come with the risk of high inflation. [...] The "Putin Price Hike" is only the latest Biden attempt to deflect responsibility.  At first, the White House insisted that inflation was "transitory."  This was, of course, repeated throughout the press.  Those who dared dissent were even fact-checked.  Inflation was all about COVID-19, they argued.  Then it was all about "supply chain disruptions." All this would come to an end, and everything will be fine, they told us.  This was all before Vladimir Putin even began his war.  Now it's Putin's fault.  People often don't have the time to study issues at length, but they can smell pure political spin from a mile away.

WSJ: Biden's lying about inflation — and workers know it.  Nothing paints Joe Biden and fellow Democrats so out of touch as their lame rhetoric about inflation being "Putin's price hike."  The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal brings the receipts on the true origins of the inflationary wave, and not just the origins but the impacts felt in every American household.  While the recent global effects have had an impact, rapid inflation began a year ago — and so did the erosion of American income.

Yes, It's Biden's Inflation.  This week, America received news of yet another shocking inflation report: over the past 12 months, inflation has skyrocketed 8.5%, outpacing wage gains by 2.9%.  That inflation has flooded every area of American life, from gas (up 48%) to airfare (24%) to furniture (16%) to milk (13%).  Inflation is costing the average American family hundreds of dollars per month — and, as we know, inflation is a highly regressive tax, harming those at the bottom of the income spectrum the most.  For its part, the Biden administration blames Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.  White House press secretary and incipient MSNBC employee Jen Psaki announced, "we expect March CPI headline inflation to be extraordinarily elevated due to Putin's price hike," and blamed gas prices alone for the spike.  That, of course, is ludicrous.

The Debasement of our Professional and Political Classes.  [Scroll down]  Do we remember the recent "stellar" cast of Nobel-Prize winning and near-Nobel laureates who admonished us that Biden's massive deficit spending programs would never lead to inflation?  In circular fashion, Biden solicited and then cited this "blue-chip" group of experts led by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.  Stiglitz warned the hoi polloi not to worry about printing trillions of dollars at the very moment pent-up demand from the COVID lockdowns was surging, when for millions the government kept issuing checks that made staying home more lucrative than working, when interest rates were at near zero, and when the national debt was cresting at $30 trillion.  The distinguished economists promised us that if we just followed the Biden lead, then inflation would actually decrease.  Or as they put it, "Because this agenda invests in long-term economic capacity and will enhance the ability of more Americans to participate productively in the economy, it will ease longer-term inflationary pressure." [emphasis added].

Don't Be Fooled by Biden's 'Only Taxing the Rich' Claims.  On the campaign trail, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden claimed dozens of times that the 98% of Americans earning less than $400,000 per year wouldn't pay a penny more in taxes if he was elected.  Apparently, the federal government could spend trillions more on a big government social agenda at no cost to the average American.  To some, that may sound like a great deal.  But if 15 months of the Biden presidency have taught us anything, it's that nothing he promises is free.  In 2021, the Biden administration and Congress spent with reckless abandon, unnecessarily racking up $2.8 trillion of new debt.  Although their attempts to directly raise taxes on working Americans were mostly blocked or stalled, their deficit-fueled spending contributed to an enormous indirect tax on all Americans in the form of 7.9% annual inflation.

Understanding the Progressive Mind.  Everyone in Washington understands the basic causes of inflation.  If you print more money than you have real assets like gold to back it up, you devalue your currency and make everything cost more. [...] The Biden reactionaries denied their responsibility for the costly and dangerous inflation their policies have created in the way they normally cover up their assaults on the public — with two obvious lies.  First by claiming that the inflation was "transitory," and then by blaming it on Vladimir Putin — calling it "Putin's price hike."  The brazen character of these lies and the fact that Biden has kept repeating them in the face of devastating refutations reflects the fact that the Democrats know full well what they are doing, which is stoking the fires of a volatile inflation which is causing profound hardship to the very constituencies they pretend to care about — people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

Illegal immigrant population soars to 11.4 million.  The number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. soared by more than 1 million last year, reaching 11.4 million as of this January, according to new research released Tuesday that puts new contours on the border chaos under President Biden.  The surge is the largest in two decades and is among the largest single-year increases in U.S. history, said Steven A. Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, the lead researcher who wrote the paper.  He used Census Bureau numbers to calculate the trajectory of the unauthorized population, figuring there were about 11.5 million in January 2019, that figure plummeted to 10.2 million by the start of 2021, then soared to 11.4 million at the start of this year.

The Editor says...
In my opinion, the illegal alien population in the U.S. is probably around 30 million, but the news media has been saying "11 million" for at least the last 20 years, regardless of how many record-breaking months of illegal entry we've seen.

The child tax credit is a ruse.  Here's what is at the heart of the woke push for a permanent cash child tax credit — really, a government-provided cash allowance to procreate.  It's about creating electoral dependency and buying votes.  If leftists really wanted to help children from low-income families, they would be pushing more for government-funded daycare to help working parents and expansion of pre-kindergarten programs for the children of working parents.  It's true that the Biden Build Back Better plan provides $100 billion over the next three years for expanded childcare, but when you actually spread that out and apply it to the eligible 23.6 million children below age five, it's only about $100 per month — hardly enough to pay for child care.

The Looting of America.  "I'm sick of this stuff!" barked an angry and exasperated President Joe Biden.  "The American people think the reason for inflation is government spending more money!  It's simply not true!"  Two days later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doubled down on Biden's claim, attacking those pointing to Democrats' galactic spending as the main inflation culprit and insisting, incredibly, that "the government spending is doing the exact reverse, reducing the national debt!  It is not inflationary."  Pelosi even blamed rapidly rising prices on Vladimir Putin — even though the Russian dictator invaded Ukraine just weeks ago on Feb. 24, while "Bidenflation" has been ravaging the country since shortly after Biden took office in January 2021.  As usual, whatever America's progressive ruling elites fervently claim is the truth can reliably be assumed to be precisely the opposite of the truth.

10 Realities of Ukraine.  [#6] The Ukraine war did not cause inflation and record gas prices.  Both were already spiking by early February 2022.  The cause was the Biden Administration's year-long radical expansion of the money supply at a time of post-COVID, pent-up consumer demand.  It foolishly continued de facto zero-interest rates.  Its generous COVID subsidies for the unemployed discouraged a return to work, while slashing U.S. oil and gas production and pipelines.  Prior to Putin's invasion, Biden was quite publicly blaming greedy corporations, oil companies, COVID, and former President Donald Trump for the inflation he had birthed in 2021.  And he was claiming undeniable high prices were only temporary or mostly an obsession of the elite.

U.S. Retail Sales Collapse as Govt and Media Attempt Denial That Economy Is Contracting.  When retail sales are calculated, they are calculated in dollars.  Any recorded increase in retail sales that does not exceed the price increases in those items is factually reflecting a drop in units sold. [...]
  •   Furniture prices rose 0.8% in Feb, total furniture sales dropped 1.0%
  •   Electronics and appliances rose around 1.8% in Feb, sales dropped 0.6%
  •   Online sales items rose in price around 0.5%, sales dropped 3.7%
What this reflects is an actual contraction much greater than the dollar drop in sales.  In most cases the unit sales dropped at a rate six times the price difference.  If you reverse engineer the math, the average is approximately a 15% reduction in durable good units purchased.  In a very macro perspective, that means the U.S. economy overall has approximately 15% too much labor in the sectors associated with the categories of goods that people have stopped purchasing.  This means people working in the durable goods sector, production, assembly, transportation, delivery and retail sales staff, are about to get laid off work, RIF'd and downsized.

Four Charts Prove Biden Is Lying About Putin And Inflation.  As inflation has continued to climb, so have the number of President Joe Biden's excuses for why he's not to blame.  First, it was a "transitory" effect of the economy rebounding from COVID lockdowns.  Then it was the result of supply chain problems because ports didn't operate 24/7.  Then it was due to a lack of competition among beef suppliers.  Then it was greed.  Now he's settled on Vladimir Putin.  None of it is true.  But the White House is so determined to take advantage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine it invited TikTok "influencers" to propagandize them.  The mainstream press had already fallen in line, delivering stories about why Biden is not at fault.  But Biden is to blame.  He set off the current inflationary spiral with the $2 trillion "rescue plan" he and his fellow Democrats jammed through at the start of 2021.  They claimed the money was desperately needed to get the economy back on track (it wasn't) and dismissed warnings from even liberal economists that dumping all that money (while paying people not to work) at a time when the economy was rapidly rebounding would spark an inflationary spiral.

Pelosi claims government spending is 'reducing the national debt' and 'not inflationary'.  On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressed a press conference at the House Democratic Issues Conference, telling the audience that President Joe Biden's Build Back Better agenda will not add to inflation or the nation's debt.  The point came in response to a question regarding executive action.  [Video clip]

Biden blames PUTIN for 7.9% inflation — the highest in 40 years.  President Joe Biden raised eyebrows after blaming soaring US inflation on Vladimir Putin, after the consumer price index hit another 40-year high of 7.9 percent in February.  Although the inflation data released on Thursday does not capture the full impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which occurred just days before the end of February, Biden in a statement chose to blame 'Putin's price hike.'  'A large contributor to inflation this month was an increase in gas and energy prices as markets reacted to Putin's aggressive actions,' said Biden.

Even CNN Isn't Buying Biden's New Lie About Inflation.  We had a warning that the coming inflationary number was going to be bad from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.  That's why you knew it was going to be bad — and she wasn't wrong.  The Consumer Price Index (CPI) jumped 7.9 percent for February, year-over-year reaching yet another 40-year-high and a new record for Joe Biden.  In a statement released by the White House, first, Biden bragged about his economy even as it's crushing Americans.  Talk about out of touch.  But then, just like with the skyrocketing gas prices, Biden has a new excuse for why there's such a huge increase in the year-over-year inflation — blame that on Vladimir Putin and the Russian invasion as well.

Kamala Harris say it is time to make a 'transition' to green energy as she pushes electric cars.  Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Monday [3/7/2022] pushed a transition to green energy and electric cars as Americans face record high prices at the pump.  As gas costs soar and more workers are returning to the office as covid numbers fall, President Joe Biden's administration announced a $3.7 billion boost for public transportation, including an investment in new fleets of electric buses.  'We are all in the midst of a turning point.  We have the technologies to transition to a zero emission fleet,' Harris said during the announcement.  'We can address the climate crisis and grow our economy at the same time.'

The Editor says...
[#1] When the government prints and spends money, it does not help the economy to grow.  [#2] There is no climate crisis.  [#3]  High gas prices are almost entirely Joe Biden's fault, or the fault of the anonymous committee that makes Joe Biden's decisions.

Former Obama Treasury official says Biden is dishonest on inflation causes.  An Obama-era Treasury Department official on Thursday accused President Biden of being "dishonest" about the causes of surging inflation that has vexed consumers.  Steven Rattner, who served as counsel to the Treasury secretary, said In a New York Times op-ed that Mr. Biden's insistence on blaming the supply chain crisis for rising inflation is "both simplistic and misleading." "Blaming inflation on supply lines is like complaining about your sweater keeping you too warm after you've added several logs to the fireplace," Mr. Rattner said.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admits surging 7.5% inflation is 'NOT acceptable'.  Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has admitted soaring US inflation is 'not acceptable' — then insisted the American economy would be even worse were it not for the very spending by the Biden administration that has been blamed for soaring prices.  Speaking to AFP, Yellen said of the rise in cost of living — which hit 7.5 percent last month:  'Inflation is clearly a great concern to Americans, and it really needs to be addressed.  'Certainly it's not acceptable to stay at current levels.'  Her words were in marked contrast to Joe Biden's, who has repeatedly insisted that surging inflation figures are 'elevated,' and a temporary phenomenon.

The bad inflation numbers are even worse than the government says.  You couldn't miss the headlines:  The annual percentage increase in inflation clocked in at 7.5%, making it the worst increase in 40 years.  For anyone on a fixed income, living off of savings, or in a low-paying job, this is a disaster.  Rich people don't feel it (much) but ordinary people do.  But here's the kicker:  Inflation is almost certainly worse than it was 40 and more years ago.  Moreover, because the government is in thrall to Modern Monetary Theory, it's going to get worse, lots worse. [...] Certainly, inflation has shot up with incredible speed, as happened in 1982, but real inflation is probably even worse than the accelerated rate suggests.  That's because, in 1990, the government changed how it calculated inflation (something it also did in 1980).

Six Basic Concepts Liberals Don't Get.  [#2] Stimulus spending stimulates only government growth.  The economy is stimulated when people spend money.  But before the government can dole out stimulus checks, it has to take the money from taxpayers.  So taking money away from taxpayers and then giving some of it back is somehow supposed to give them more money to spend?  Economic prosperity cannot be spurred by government spending.  "Build Back Better" is a lie just as "Shovel Ready Projects" was before it.  Every dollar the government takes from its citizens is one less dollar being spent to buy a product or hire an employee.  Taking money from people who actually produce something, and then giving less of it back, does not create economic growth.  It throttles it.  The only thing that actually grows as a result of government stimulus spending is government itself.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Falsely Advertises Build Back Better in Memo to Senate.  Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is carrying out a desperate, last-ditch effort to sell the increasingly unpopular Build Back Better Act before the year ends.  Yellen sent a memo to the Senate Dec. 9 titled "Fiscal Responsibility and the Build Back Better Act."  She wanted to get ahead of major reports that delivered a one-two punch to the Democrats' plan to increase taxes and dole it back out to friends of the party.  Despite repeated assertions of the bill being paid for, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report showing that the temporary policies in the bill would increase deficit spending by $3 trillion.  On top of that, inflation is hitting a 40-year high as consumer prices continue to rise because of out-of-control government spending.  As the Biden administration finds itself unable to escape the real economic consequences of its left-wing policies, Yellen in her memo swings blind with claims that are far removed from reality.

Biden's Build Back Better Lie Revealed: $5 Tril Isn't 'Zero'.  President Joe Biden and other Democrats have smugly responded "zero" or "nothing" when asked what the massive Build Back Better plan will ultimately cost.  Not to be rude, but this is an outright lie, as a new government analysis clearly shows.  "My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars," Biden tweeted on Sept. 25 from his White House account.  "Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America.  And it adds zero dollars to the national debt."  In the ensuing weeks, that lie got repeated by others.  That includes White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who told gullible leftists in the mainstream media that the bill would cost nothing, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who added the novel twist that the massive bill is "fully paid for."

The Wall Street Journal Slams Biden And Dems:  Build Back Better Price Tag Is 'Lie Of The Year'.  President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies have consistently said that Biden's 'Build Back Better Plan' will add zero dollars to the deficit.  This — of course — is mathematically impossible, but the Democratic party and their pals in the media have repeated it often enough in hopes it becomes true.  On Monday, The Wall Street Journal editorial board issued a blistering column, explaining why the true cost of the BBB plan is at least $3 trillion over a 10-year span of time and calling the claim zero dollars the "lie of the year": [...]

Why won't the White House take inflation seriously?  [Scroll down]  And for all that the Biden White House now claims to take the inflation threat seriously, one cannot help but feel the administration basically views the problem as one of messaging and spin, rather than anything more serious.  Consider, for example, the insincere way in which Build Back Better has been rebranded as an urgently needed inflation-busting measure.  The economic picture is radically different to when Build Back Better was first introduced.  And yet we are supposed to believe that the legislation remains the perfect set of measures for the moment.  The White House has officially dropped talk of "transitory" inflation, but they clearly still think of it as a temporary problem.

CBO blows the lid off Biden's agenda as Bidenflation shows its teeth.  Where is Paul Volcker when you need him?  In the early 1980s, the late Federal Reserve chairman stared down double-digit inflation and made it blink first.  Back [then], Volcker helped President Ronald Reagan wring inflation out of the economy in what proved to be an extremely traumatic but also necessary process.  Volcker's work in constricting the money supply with interest rates almost unthinkably high — the federal funds rate peaked at 20% — helped pave the way to the economic expansion of the Reagan era.

The White House's Desperation on the Economy Devolves Into Complete Absurdity.  Objectively, the news on the economy over the last few weeks has not been encouraging.  November's jobs report showed a miss of over 50%.  Then yesterday's inflation numbers dropped like a thermonuclear weapon on the White House's narrative.  After a week of colluding with the media and waging a PR war to try to convince people the economy is actually great, inflation was revealed to be 6.8%, the highest in 39 years.  Naturally, the polling has shown significant disapproval with the situation, whether we are talking about Joe Biden personally or the right-track/wrong-track numbers.  Yet, instead of resetting their messaging, the White House has instead decided who's really at fault here:  You.  Yes, according to Jen Psaki, your concerns over the current economic malaise are not based in reality, but are, in fact, a condition of psychosis due to COVID-19.

Democrats don't care about inflation, the poor, the middle class, women, or science.  They care about raw power.  Democrats continue to lie when they say Trump's tax cuts cost the government trillions and benefited only the rich.  The facts are that the tax cuts benefited everyone, especially those in the lower and middle classes.  The government is also getting a great increase in revenues under the Trump tax cuts.  Revenues increased from over $3.3 trillion in FY2017 to over $4 trillion in 2021.  Up over 30% in four years.  The tax rate cuts did pay for themselves.  In 2018, the top 1% paid 40.1% of taxes even though they earned 20.9% in adjusted gross income.  Somehow paying almost double their share of income in taxes is not enough.

The Biden-Buttigieg Pitch:  It's All Free!  Many Americans are concerned about the Democrats' orgy of spending, fearing particularly that pumping so much extra money into the economy will feed the inflation that has become the public's greatest economic concern of the moment.  So Biden came up with an argument that essentially said no one should worry because it will all be free.  "My Build Back Better agenda costs zero dollars," the president tweeted on Sept. 25.  White House chief of staff Ron Klain said, "The net cost of Build Back Better is zero." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added, "The dollar amount, as the president said, is zero."  It was all preposterous, of course.  Two trillion dollars does not just appear out of nowhere.

Almost everything Pelosi is saying about Biden's 'Build Back Better' agenda is wrong.  The House voted Friday to advance President Joe Biden's multitrillion-dollar welfare and climate change spending legislation, the so-called "Build Back Better" agenda.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi led the charge and made an impassioned speech promoting the legislation.  There's just one problem:  Almost every single major factual claim she made about the "Build Back Better" agenda is false.  "Build Back Better is fully paid for.  It reduces the deficit and grows the economy," Pelosi said on the House floor.  This is incorrect on all counts.  The "Build Back Better" plan will likely cost taxpayers up to $4.9 trillion — and no, it isn't "fully paid for" by offsetting tax increases.  (Even if it were, that's an insane amount of money going to wasteful government spending schemes.)  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that the bill would add $367 billion to the deficit over 10 years — or about $160 billion if one factors in the money possibly raised by the legislation's enhanced IRS tax crackdowns.

Varney: Build Back Broke Is The 'Most Dishonest Spending Bill In American History'.  [Video clip]

Budget Buster:  Social Welfare Bill Will Cost More Than Zero Dollars, No One Surprised.  Back in September, President Biden told reporters, "We talk about price tags. [Build Back Better] is zero price tag on the debt.  We're paying — we're going to pay for everything we spend."  Biden followed that statement up with a tweet the following day that reiterated, "My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars."  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki echoed the "zero dollars" talking point during a press briefing saying, ""What we're talking about is how much the top-line investments are, which are all paid for, so therefore it costs zero.  No matter what the size or the cost of the top-line investments are, we have ways to pay for it."  Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got in on the fun, throwing common sense and common core to the wind, telling reporters, "It's not about a dollar amount.  The dollar amount, as the president said, is zero.  This bill will be paid for."

The CBO Just Swept the Leg of Joe Biden's 'Build Back Better' Boondoggle.  While Nancy Pelosi hopes to pass the so-called "Build Back Better" bill tonight in the House, some bad news came down the line from the CBO.  Previous commitments were made by some "moderate" Democrats to vote for the bill only if the budget score came back deficit-neutral.  But the preliminary numbers are out, and it looks like the CBO has completely debunked the White House's "it costs zero dollars" talking point.  At first, Democrats were cheering on social media after seeing the following post from the CBO.  [Tweet]  That excitement came from a misreading of how the CBO is scoring this bill.  Instead of giving one, succinct number, the CBO is taking it piece by piece.  That was set up purposely by Democrats in hopes of muddying the waters.

CBO Proves the Biden Administration Is Lying on Multiple Fronts.  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has effectively declared that President Joe Biden, Co-President Ron Klain, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are liars.  Coincidentally avoiding discussion of catastrophes in the Middle East and along our southern border, Biden, Klain, and Pelosi have long insisted their Build Back Better social welfare boondoggle "costs nothing."  [Video clip]  Sane counter-arguments from sentient conservatives, explaining how the bill costs way more than nothing, have proven correct.  "The White House has begun bracing lawmakers for a disappointing estimate from the budget office, which is likely to find that the cost of the overall package will not be fully paid for with new tax revenue over the coming decade.  Senior administration officials are urging lawmakers to disregard the budget office assessment, saying it is being overly conservative in its calculations," the New York Times reported Tuesday [11/16/2021].  A formal score is expected Friday.

6 Ridiculous Budget Gimmicks In House Democrats' 'Build Back Bankrupt' Spending Spree.  [#4] Phony Savings from Repealing Rule That Won't Go Into Effect:  The bill generates "savings" by repealing a rule regarding prescription drug pricing rebates issued in the final days of the Trump administration.  CBO and the Medicare actuary concluded that the rule would raise Medicare spending, meaning that its repeal would save money, at least in theory.  (I explained the issue in detail earlier this summer.)  But the rule hasn't gone into effect — and won't ever go into effect, given process flaws leading up to its issuance and a legal challenge based on those procedural flaws.  Moreover, Democrats have (unofficially) said they don't want the rule to go into effect.  But the Biden administration won't withdraw the rebate rule officially, because Democrats want the phony "savings" that comes from Congress repealing a rule Biden has no intention of moving ahead with.

Surprise! Biden's Spending Bills Will Not 'Cost Zero Dollars'.  President Joe Biden's administration is facing a daunting reality check after claiming for months that their spending agenda will "cost zero dollars," with the head of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) saying the White House drastically overestimated the revenue the IRS could gain by cracking down on tax loopholes.  Biden and numerous other senior Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill have repeatedly insisted that their $1.85 trillion social spending package will add nothing to the national debt.  They argued the package included enough pay-fors to offset the spending programs.  CBO chief Phillip Swagel brought that claim down on Monday, however, saying that the tax loophole crackdown in the bill would only garner $120 billion, a far cry from the White House's projected $400 billion, according to The New York Times.

Joe Biden's big cookbook for inflation.  Joe Biden says we must pass his huge slush-fund social-spending package now in the works in Congress in order to reduce inflation.  Since when does throwing money at anything reduce inflation?  Did Obamacare reduce health care costs?  Did all the cash thrown at higher education, such as federal student loans, reduce college tuition?  If they pass free daycare and pre-K education, then as sure as the sun rises, those prices will skyrocket because the providers will have a captive audience.  Treasury secretary Janet Yellen says inflation will drop magically to 2% next year.  We know that earlier this year, she and others said the current inflation in the system is just transitory.  White House chief of staff Ron Klain and others say that since these slush funds are "paid for," they aren't inflationary.  They claim these slush funds are "paid for" by pretending that the new entitlements will last a few years and then be paid with all the revenues from tax hikes on "the rich" over ten years.  Of course, that's a lie, too.

How long can MSNBC viewers fall for the lies?  [Scroll down]  For months MNSBC has been following the Democrat Party line that inflation was all but non-existent, then it was "transitory," and now while it is real, inflation is not a problem.  After Velshi MSNBC's next program, The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart came on.  His first guest was the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who discussed rising prices.  "Part of the reason that people are talking about inflation is that there are costs rising for American families across the county."  Duh!  Her party's solution?  Of course it's the expensive Build Back Better bill that includes child care money — and that will bring down costs for Americans.  Wow.  Give Jayapal her Nobel Prize for Economics now!

The White House's Latest Statement on Gas Prices Is So Astonishingly Stupid...  In the ongoing saga that has been the stream of completely delusional propaganda that has been coming out of the Biden White House, nothing has been more astounding than the spin on our current economic downturn. [...] We've heard everything from arguments that inflation is a good thing to suggestions that printing additional money doesn't cause inflation.  Yes, they want you to believe that increasing the supply of money, thus decreasing the value of the money already in circulation, is not the literal primary cause of inflation and certainly hasn't contributed to the highest inflationary rate in nearly 40 years.  Mayor Pete is out there saying that one inflation fix is Biden's Infrastructure Plan, which is just massive Government Spending, likely requiring the printing of more money, without creating anything or increasing production because the vast majority of planning and funding for roads and infrastructure comes from state and local sources anyway.  The result of printing money is almost always inflation.

Economically incomprehensible Biden regime says printing more fake fiat money will reduce inflation.  In a shocking (but not really) display of economic illiteracy, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has stated that the only way to stop runaway inflation is to print more fake fiat "funny money" currency from the Federal Reserve.  Yellen told fake financial news outlet CNBC that passing the Biden regime's new multi-trillion-dollar "infrastructure" package is the only way to lower prices at a time when the impact of previous spending bills is already moving the country towards a hyperinflationary collapse.  "What this package will do is lower some of the most important costs, what they pay for health care, for child care," Yellen stated, "they" referring to the peons below her who are suffering because of she and the regime's existing monetary policies.  "It's anti-inflationary in that sense as well," she added with a straight face.

White House:  Rising Gas Prices Proves Government Should Spend More on Green Energy.  The White House on Friday said that rising gas prices proved that the federal government should spend more on green energy.  "The rise in gas prices over the long term makes an even stronger case for doubling down our investment and our focus on clean energy options," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during the daily briefing.  Psaki acknowledged that the White House had suspended oil and gas leases on federal lands, but clarified that existing leases were still able to produce.  She blamed market fluctuations driven by OPEC for rising gas prices and repeated that the Biden administration would continue monitoring any cases of possible price gouging by energy companies.

The Editor says...
The federal government has no money of its own to spend on anything.  When someone says the government should spend more on their pet project, they're playing with someone else's money.

As America Teeters on Fiscal Disaster, Biden Worries about the Weather.  President Biden promised the $1.75 trillion spending package won't "add a single penny to the deficit" or "raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year."  Those are important things to promise, given mounting inflation and a flatlining economic recovery.  But without plans to slash red tape or get Americans back to work, the only way for Biden to fulfill such promises is with magic.  None of the Democrats' proposed tax increases can provide enough revenue.

Will Governments Survive the Coming Peasant Revolt?  [Scroll down]  Budgets grew bigger than tax revenues could afford, and the system of stealing from the peasants to enrich the lords was threatened.  So what did the system do to preserve power?  It de-coupled the dollar from any tangible value in the real world by ending the gold standard.  Now paper dollars were worth more than the value of their paper only if people shared the delusion (or at least accepted their government's assurances) that paper is as valuable as gold.  Without anything tethering the dollar to real-world assets, the government giddily used the last half-century to print and spend dollars until the value of a dollar today is worth only two cents compared to 1971.  Again, those who own assets have seen their wealth in terms of dollars artificially rise, while those who work on salary have suffered, as everything has gotten more expensive.  Local, state, and national debts ballooned.  The rich benefited enormously.  The middle class fell into poverty.  And the fuse of an unavoidable debt bomb triggering a future financial collapse got lit.  Everything the government does today is about lengthening that fuse in order to delay the explosion while preparing for the aftermath once it goes boom.

Democrats Use Accounting Gimmicks to Conceal Spending in Bloated 'Build Back Better' Bill.  President Joe Biden is twisting arms to get "agreement" this week on hundreds of tax and spending provisions in his multitrillion-dollar social welfare bill while key Democrats seem to be settling on a plan to keep the price tag down.  They want to reduce the overall size of the spending bill to "only" $1 trillion to $2 trillion (as though those two numbers were even remotely close), and only fund programs for a short time, assuming that it would be too painful for a future Congress to stop funding them.  There's simply too much in this massive "Build Back Better" bill to digest — free community college, paid family leave, universal pre-K, bigger child tax credits, climate "incentives," and, of course, major expansions of government spending on health care, as The Daily Signal has explained in numerous articles.

True cost of Dems' plans: $7.5 trillion and a lot of gimmicks.  After months of criticizing Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema for balking at the original $3.5 trillion price tag, congressional Democrats are finally accepting reality and paring President Biden's social welfare package to between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion over the decade.  Does this mean they are responsibly removing the bill's worst provisions and crafting fiscally sustainable legislation?  Of course not!  Instead, welcome to the gimmick Olympics, where progressives are using classic accounting tricks to hide the true cost of the bill.  Instead of producing legislation that truly costs $2 trillion over the decade, lawmakers are crafting as much as $4 trillion worth of new initiatives, but simply using fake expiration dates to score only a few years of each proposal.  The idea is to create new federal programs, hook the constituencies on new federal benefits, and then assume that future Congresses and presidents will not dare to allow them to expire.  Those assumed extensions will then blow up the cost far above today's $2 trillion sticker price.

Democrats' bank-spying proposal is not about wealthy tax cheats — it's about you.  This weekend, Binyamin Appelbaum argued in the New York Times that Republicans, in opposing the Democrats' proposal to monitor bank accounts with certain minimum transactions, are abetting tax evasion.  The IRS, he notes, has recently estimated that nearly half of all income not reported independently on W-2 or 1099 forms goes unreported.  Therefore, give the government access to your banking habits, or else you're a criminal.  In logic, this is known as the "false choice" fallacy, and it is one of several that he commits in this piece.

61% Of Americans paid no federal income taxes in 2020? Who's greedy?  Incredibly, in 2020, approximately 61% of Americans paid no federal income taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center.  Therefore, approximately 39% of Americans paid all federal income taxes.  They are rewarded for this staggering largess by being told they need to "pay their fair share."  Their "fair share," one might logically surmise, would be around 39% of the federal income taxes paid, not 100%.  The top 20% of income earners pay about 67% of federal taxes.  "Progressive," you know.  They should be lauded as pillars of the community, as not only the most productive, but the most charitable folks in society.  (Whether they wanted to be or not.)  Instead, they are called "greedy" by the self-same people who receive the benefits of this mass income redistribution.

The gaslighting of America.  When Biden proposes a $3.5-billion "infrastructure bill" that is heavily weighted toward social engineering and radical "Green New Deal" initiatives, we're told that everything is infrastructure.  We're also told that the massive spending bill will cost "zero dollars" because the new taxes will be assessed only on the wealthy.  Then, to add more consternation to a public getting groggy trying to keep up with twelve-digit numbers, Biden and his accomplices want another $80 billion for the IRS so its agents can check into every bank account that has transfers of $600 or more.  As if the IRS weren't already a liberty-crushing organization, Biden wants to provide it with more ammo to use against those who oppose him.  Nevertheless, we're told it's going after only tax cheats.  Why would these people need $80 billion more to do what they've always done?  Don't ask, lest you get audited for questions they don't want asked.

Biden Bizarrely Claims That Government Spending Is Costless.  There is only one way to describe the fiscal mindset of those in the White House and in Congress who are proposing new federal budgetary expenditure and taxing increases in the trillions of dollars:  a fantasy land of financial irrationality.  The Biden administration insists on additions to the already bloated American welfare state that will see an expansion in entitlement programs and increased societal dependency on government largess not implemented since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs of the 1960s.  But to show just how much Joe Biden's mind seems to operate in some alternate universe, he has recently informed us that the $3.5 trillion of additional government spending over the next several years will cost "nothing."  Why nothing?  Because over $2.1 trillion will be covered by taxing the rich and large corporations.

Even At Half The Price, Biden's Plan Is A Self-Destructive, Freedom-Destroying Spending Spree.  Just when you thought Democrats couldn't get more arrogant or dishonest, President Joe Biden on Tuesday, visiting the congressional district of one of the House's less-extreme Democrats, warned that "autocrats" in the world are scrutinizing America for signs of decline on the geopolitical stage, and we therefore must "invest in ourselves" to prove "that American democracy works."  Translation: spend trillions with a T establishing a new series of cradle-to-grave entitlements that, like our already-existing entitlements, will in short order become politically impossible ever to repeal.  Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, moreover, look straight into the TV camera and tell the American people that these unprecedented, astronomical expenditures will cost zero.  This, not Donald Trump placing the spotlight on all-too-real election fraud, is the true "Big Lie."  No one using a gift card at the store in the weeks after Christmas is a big enough liar or financial illiterate to claim that the spending spree he's enjoying costs zero.

Psaki says $3.5T spending bill costs nothing for people earning less than $400K.  White House press secretary Jen Psaki claimed Monday that President Biden's Build Back Better agenda will cost nothing for Americans who make less than $400,000.  "Let's not dumb this down for the American public here," Psaki said in response to a question from White House correspondent Peter Doocy about whether the package will cost "zero dollars" as the president claimed last week. [...] When Doocy pressed for clarification regarding whether the plan costs nothing or if it is free, Psaki added:  "The plan costs nothing for the American people who make less than $400,000.  If you think that companies that paid zero in taxes last year 50 of the top companies should continue to pay zero in taxes, we're happy to have that debate."

Exactly the opposite is true.
Biden says anyone who doesn't back his multi-trillion infrastructure bills are 'complicit in America's decline'.  President Joe Biden arrived in Michigan Tuesday to hawk his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the larger budget bill at a union hall.  The president landed in Lansing and was greeted by Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who is facing a tough re-election fight next year.  Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist linked up with Biden on-site.  Biden visited a branch of the International Union of Operating Engineers in Howell, Michigan, the county seat of Livingston County, which chose former President Donald Trump over Biden by more than 20 points.

Jen Psaki Is the Stupidest Person in the World (Or Hopes You Are).  Psaki actually represents perfectly her brothers and sisters on the Left in their belief that businesses are all run by Scrooge McDuck and have secret safes hiding all the money they took away from poor people.  With just the right taxes, the money will come out and the poor people will be rich again.  But [columnist Stephen Green] knows — you know — that's not how any of this works or has ever worked or ever will work.  Running a business is a constant balancing act between ever-changing costs and incomes.  And that a business that can't make a profit doesn't stay in business for long.  Price of materials goes up?  Prices go up.  Cost of labor increases?  Prices increase.  Tax hikes?  Price hikes.  A business might eat a temporary cost increase for a short while in order to avoid alienating customers, but only for a short while.

No, government spending isn't 'zero cost'.  This week, President Joe Biden made the incredible statement — sycophantically repeated by the press — that his $3.5 trillion budget bill, which includes major spending initiatives on everything from climate change to Medicare, would be "free."  Biden tweeted, "My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars.  Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America."  This asinine notion immediately rocketed around the political sphere.  White House press secretary Jen Psaki explained, "The reconciliation package will cost zero dollars."  Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said, "This is a zero-dollar bill because it's all going to be paid for with taxes on the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest individuals, which makes it more popular than it even was before."  Members of the media began repeating the line ad nauseum.  The reason was obvious:  Democrats are trying to cudgel Republicans into acquiescing.

We Are Governed by Children.  Sometime around mid-day last Friday, as the headwinds blew strongly against the $3.5 trillion reconciliation boondoggle, the White House and their allies in Congress decided on a new messaging strategy:  Just say it costs nothing.  Yes, in the fantasy world our political leaders inhabit, $3.5 trillion "costs zero dollars."  That was the line Joe Biden dropped on September 25th.  Worse, the media have run with that idea, arguing into absurdity that tax cuts that let you keep more of your own income "cost" money but huge, multi-trillion-dollar spending bills are somehow free because of tax hikes that may or may not produce what is claimed.  Of course, what happens when you raise taxes on corporations while spending gobs of money the government doesn't actually have?

Pompeo rips Biden over 'zero price tag' claim.  Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo ripped President Joe Biden and his statement suggesting the average person will face a 'zero pricetag' in connection to Biden's original $5 trillion federal spending proposal.  However, that amount moved closer to $6 trillion, but only recently passed the Senate at $3.5 trillion.  A report from May suggested the true number is closer to $6 trillion, but as of now, the Senate has put forth a bill of $3.5 trillion.  It was noted as a win for Biden, despite the criticism and mounting disapproval he faces.  Pompeo posted this video of Joe Biden talking about the cost of the multi-trillion proposal.  Biden says "zero" several times, suggesting that the government will pay for everything it spends.

The Editor says...
The government cannot pay for anything.  The government generates no money of its own.  It can only print the money so the rest of us can exchange our labor for goods and services.  No government spending program has ever paid for itself.  A thousand such programs operating in parallel certainly won't result in anything except greater national debt.

Sorry, Joe:  Turning US into European-style welfare state won't cost 'zero dollars'.  President Joe Biden is prone to blatant whoppers, but his claims that turning America into a European-style welfare state via the biggest expansion of federal government in decades will cost nothing are truly in a league of their own.  "My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars," he tweeted last weekend, repeating his Friday line — clearly thinking Americans will believe anything.  Biden's agenda includes $1.2 trillion for infrastructure and $3.5 trillion for social spending, the Green New Deal and other Democratic priorities.  Some items in the plan are real doozies:  $3 billion for tree saplings, with priority for "tree equity"; $5 billion for environmental- and climate-justice block grants; $50 million to grow and diversify the doula workforce; $25 million for "anti-discrimination and bias training"; $90 billion, in total, for nonprofits and community groups — whose votes, as Betsy McCaughey notes, Dems hope to buy.

Billions hidden in $3.5 trillion bill to tilt election scale.  The Democrats' $3.5 trillion social-engineering bill pushed by President Biden and Nancy Pelosi is called Build Back Better.  It should be called Building a Political Scam.  Buried in the 2,465 pages are numerous billion-dollar grants to unnamed community organizations for vague purposes like promoting "community engagement," providing "support and advice," and "creating equitable civic infrastructure."  Translation:  Your taxpayer dollars will fund the payrolls of left-wing advocacy groups between elections.  In return, they become the campaign army staffing phone banks, harvesting ballots, and escorting people to the polls on Election Day.

Psaki: It's 'Unfair And Absurd' That Companies Would Raise Costs For Consumers Due To Higher Taxes.  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed during Monday's press briefing that it would be "unfair and absurd" for companies to raise costs on consumers in response to the Biden administration raising the corporate tax rate.  [Transcript]

Here's Why Biden Is so Desperate to Sell the Lie That His Plan Costs 'Zero Dollars'.  As we previously reported, Joe Biden is going all-in with this ridiculous claim, suddenly, that his $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill costs "zero dollars."  [Tweet]  He wasn't alone in trying to push this claim.  As we pointed out, he had Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) parroting the claim.  Now, other Democrats have jumped aboard the narrative train including Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.  [Tweet]  Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA) signed on board as well.  [Tweet]  Here's White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki trying to sell the same claim.  [Tweet]

Biden Claims His $3.5 Trillion Spending Package Actually Costs $0.  According to [Joe] Biden, or whichever handler runs his Twitter account, his $3.5 trillion spending package actually costs "zero dollars."  "My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars," Biden claimed in a Twitter posts.  How does it cost "zero dollars" you may ask?  Because Biden just plans on robbing you, the American taxpayer, to pay for the package which in turn makes it "zero dollars."  Makes total sense!  "My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars," he tweeted.  "Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America.  And it adds zero dollars to the national debt."

The Editor says...
Nobody is that stupid.  This guy is nuts.

Biden White House's lies [are] a matter of life and death.  President Biden has gotten away his entire career with bending the truth and taking people for fools.  Now the habit has infected his entire administration.  So many lies are pumped out these days that it is impossible to keep up. [...] Lie 6:  The cost of the Democrats' $3.5 trillion social welfare bill is "zero" dollars.  Biden said this on Friday, when talking about slaying imaginary "trillionaires" with a mystery-box bill no one has a clue about.  "It is a zero price tag on the debt ... It's going to be zero, zero," he said.  The math doesn't need elaborating.  $3.5 trillion is not zero.

Don't buy the hype. Wealthy, big corporations do pay their fair share of taxes.  [Scroll down]  By contrast, the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office shows that in 2018, the year after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) lowered taxes for every income group, the share of income taxes paid by the top 1% of taxpayers reached a near-record high of 41.7%.  The same group paid almost 26% of all federal taxes, twice the share paid by the bottom 60% of Americans combined.

Biden's Budget: The Road to Serfdom.  In President Biden's budget speech Thursday, he referred on eight separate occasions to "pay their fair share."  He just kept repeating it.  Some left-wing pollster probably told him that it plays well in progressive precincts.  As you may have guessed, this performance and its content got under my skin.  Mr. Biden is always blaming businesses and wealthy successful individuals.  Always blaming them.  And it's a lie.  It's a big lie.  Just like any left-wing propagandist.  Say it enough, and it becomes true.  It goes way beyond cognitive dissonance.  It is just a big lie.  Let's look at some facts.  This is from the Internal Revenue Service as analyzed by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.  First, the United States has the most progressive tax system in the world.  That's according to an OECD study several years ago.  Progressive means the upper end pays far more than the low end.  So here are some facts, according to IRS data from 2018, the most recent numbers available.  The top 1% of taxpayers paid $616 billion, which is 40% of all the income taxes paid.

The true cost of Dems' '$3.5 trillion' plan is actually $5 trillion.  We'll probably keep referring to it as a "$3.5 trillion" bill to avoid confusion, but it's well worth noting that Democrats' "human infrastructure" plan would actually cost far more — at least $5 trillion.  The standard way to "score" costs is to say what they'd be over the first decade.  So to reduce sticker shock, the bill pretends that key new entitlements — in particular, a huge expansion of Medicaid — will expire after just three years.  In reality, at that point Dems will argue that it would be incredibly cruel to not fund "promised" benefits and suggest some new tax hikes to cover the added costs.

Report: Democrat Tax Hikes Will Raise Taxes On Middle-Class Americans Despite Biden's Claims.  Congressional Democrats' proposed tax hikes, which are endorsed by the Biden administration, will violate the White House's promises to spare Americans who make less than $400,000 annually from any tax increases.  President Joe Biden and the White House are framing the Democrat-led tax increases as a "historic middle-class tax cut," but their promises to put the dollar burden on just the "wealthy and large corporations" are false.

Joe Biden Breaks Pledge:  Raises Taxes on Americans Earnings over $50k.  The Democrats' $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill would break President Joe Biden's pledge not to increase taxes on working-class Americans.  The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) found that the House Ways and Means Committee's portion of the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill would increase taxes on Americans making over $50,000 or more per year in the calendar year 2031, according to a Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) report.

Ron Klain: $3.5T Democrat Agenda 'Adds Nothing to the Debt — Nothing to the Debt'.  In the evenly divided Senate, Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia has made it clear, in writing, that he does not support the $3.5-trillion reconciliation bill, which contains massive new entitlement programs long favored by Democrats.  But Ron Klain, President Biden's chief of staff, told CNN on Sunday [9/5/2021] he believes the package will pass, despite Manchin's "strong views" on the price tag.  "We're going to work together to find a way to put together a package that can pass the House, that can pass the Senate, that can be put on the president's desk and signed into law," Klain told "State of the Union" with Dana Bash.

Biden is breaking his tax increase pledge.  President Joe Biden has proposed trillions of dollars of new tax increases.  He has pledged repeatedly that his tax increases will not touch anyone earning less than $400,000.  These tax increases, he has promised, will only hit the very wealthy and the largest corporations.  But the president is breaking his pledge.  He either does not realize or is ignoring the impact his corporate tax increases will have on millions of middle-class people earning far less than $400,000.  Study after study shows that the Biden tax increases will hit millions of working people, consumers, and savers.

Democrats' spending bill [is] bigger than advertised.  Two centrist sources, one of them explicitly Democratic, provided further reasons why Congress should reject the Democratic Party's massive $3.5 trillion "reconciliation" spending bill.  The best new reason to oppose Democrats' massive, $3.5 trillion reconciliation spending bill is that even its outlandish price tag represents an exercise in budgetary sleight of hand.  In other words, it is a lie.  The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget — a respected, non-partisan arbiter — notes in a statement that its true cost "could exceed $5 trillion."  Before getting into the details, it is worth noting this $5 trillion budget blowout would come on top of a $1.2 trillion "infrastructure" bill that is more about social spending than bricks and mortar.  That one, in turn, would come atop — get this! — a total of $5.7 trillion already spent in six different COVID-19 relief bills and several executive orders in just 13 months.

The Debate Over Infrastructure Funding Gimmicks Is Exactly What's Wrong With Washington.  After a conservative backlash, Republican senators negotiating an infrastructure bill have objected to an increase in funding and authority for the IRS. In lieu of additional revenue obtained from auditing taxpayers, how do lawmakers now propose to fund increased federal spending allegedly on roads and bridges?  Through a budget gimmick.  In short, Congress now wants to repeal a rule that 1) hasn't gone into effect and 2) likely won't ever go into effect, so it can take the phony "savings" associated with repealing something that won't happen anyway and use it to "pay for" real increases in spending.

Jen Psaki Contends the Remaining $1.6 Trillion In Unspent Pandemic Relief Funds Are 'Minimal'.  The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is attempting to track the federal pandemic relief money as it gets spent.  According to their charts, out of the $900 billion authorized to be spent through administration actions, $700 billion has been allocated; out of the $5.9 trillion authorized to be spent through legislative actions, $4.3 trillion has been allocated, and out of the $6.3 trillion authorized to be spent through Federal Reserve actions, only $3.3 trillion has been allocated.  Even if we just stick to the administrative and legislative actions, that's about $1.8 trillion — not exactly chump change.

Yellen Admits Inflation Is About To Surge, Says It Will Be A "Plus For Society".  Last week, when Biden released his $6 trillion budget, we asked if it was a joke that the BIden budget saw just 2.1% inflation in 2021 and 2022.  Fast forward to this weekend, when Fed Chair Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen addressed our rhetorical concern, and following the G7 finmin meeting in London where the world's most advanced nations agreed to impose a 15% minimum corporate tax rate (with zero enforcement provisions), said that contrary to the Biden Budget, inflation could climb as high as 3% this year in what the WaPo said was "the first time the Biden administration projected what inflation could be through 2021", which by the way is dead wrong since Biden's budget just last week predicted only 2.1% CPI in 2021.

Senate Republicans propose allowing states to redirect federal funds to debt reduction.  Senate Republicans will introduce legislation Thursday [4/20/2021] to allow state and local governments to redirect federal government grants they receive to go toward paying down the growing national debt instead.  In particular, the bill would ensure that Democratic-led blue states don't end up receiving federal funds that red states have rejected.  GOP Sens. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Rick Scott of Florida are set to introduce the Pay Down the Debt Act of 2021 to give state and local leaders the power to take concrete steps to reduce the federal debt.

The Editor says...
I'm no economist, so tell me how that's supposed to work.  The federal government prints up a bunch of money, borrowed from the national debt.  Then the states take the money, and instead of spending it, they send it back to the federal government to pay down the debt.  That won't affect the debt at all.  The federal government could eliminate the middle-man and just print $20 trillion, and then have a big ceremony at which they drop all that cash into an enormous made-for-TV piggy bank.  The effect is the same.  This kind of shell game is something you'd expect from the Democrats!

6 Charts Highlight Troubling Trends Driven by Growing Nondefense Spending.  If you listen to the narrative being promoted by President Joe Biden and his allies on the left, it would be easy to think that the federal government spends more than enough on the military and little on nondefense social programs.  Yet the reality is exactly the opposite.  The federal government has become home to an ever-expanding assortment of benefit and subsidy programs (and bureaucrats to administer them), while shortchanging constitutional priorities such as national security.  The growth of the federal budget and the debt has been driven by an unsustainable growth in nondefense spending.

War Of Words Over Inflation Stirs Questions for the Fed.  The war of words unleashed on Wall Street and in Washington by Wednesday's announcement of an unexpectedly high rate of consumer price inflation is escalating by the day.  Legendary hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller had warned on Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal that the Fed was enabling fiscal and market excesses by not standing up to the political whims of Congress; he stated on CNBC that the Fed's overly accommodative monetary policies posed a risk to the status of the United States dollar as a global reserve currency.  Refuting such concerns, Paul Krugman asks today in his column for the New York Times whether President Biden should scrap his entire economic agenda merely because the spike in consumer prices as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics was bigger than expected.  "OK, I'm being a bit snarky here, but only a bit," Mr. Krugman concedes.  Snarky is hardly the word for the crass deprecations he offers in his concurrent newsletter, wherein he notes "a lot of buzz around how the Fed's wanton abuse of its power to create money will soon lead to runaway inflation." The Nobel laureate dismisses fears of monetary debasement as being anchored in neither fact nor logic but rather attributable to an "infestation of monetary cockroaches."

New Math:  Psaki Says Inflation Is a Sign of Economic Success.  The Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers were just released and — in a bit of bad news for the Biden administration — they indicated inflation rose faster in April 2021 than it had in 12 years. [...] Gas consumers don't need to see those numbers to know they've been paying more at the pump.  Nor do people looking to buy a used car or a new home.  But that bad news didn't stop White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki from telling Americans that the rising prices were simply a sign of the Biden administration's "successful economic strategy" in a word salad answer to a reporter's question Thursday [5/13/2021].

'I'm not a deficit spender,' Biden says.  In a pitch to Louisiana voters, President Joe Biden touted tax hikes on corporations and wealthy people, measures he said were necessary to pay for his sweeping infrastructure package.  "I'm not a deficit spender," Biden said in Lake Charles, standing before a 70-year-old bridge that former President Donald Trump had promised to rebuild two years ago were he to win a second term.  It was Biden's latest stop on a nationwide tour to build support for his nearly $2.3 trillion "American Jobs Plan," where he was joined by Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter, a Republican.

Biden's 'families' plan costs $700B more than WH estimate:  Model.  President Biden's $1.8 trillion families plan actually costs $2.5 trillion and would shrink the economy in the long run because of escalating debt, according to projections released Wednesday by an influential budget model out of the University of Pennsylvania.  The study came as Mr. Biden vowed not to add to federal deficits to get his agenda through and pointed to other analyses that are more bullish on his plans.  The pricier estimate comes from a boost in projected costs for tax credits and spending on provisions like universal pre-K and free community college, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

Joe Biden Mumbles About His "Infrastructure" Bill, Bizarrely Claims His $3 Trillion in Tax Hikes "Doesn't Cost Anybody Anything".  Joe Biden on Thursday [5/6/2021] stumbled through remarks on the American Jobs Plan while visiting Lake Charles, Louisiana.  Biden is completely clueless and he struggled to read through his notes (as usual).  Joe Biden falsely claimed his "infrastructure" bill that has virtually nothing to do with infrastructure will create 16 million jobs.  Biden also absurdly claimed that his $3 trillion in tax hikes "doesn't cost anybody anything."

The lies of Joe Biden.  Last night, Joe Biden lied about a range of issues.  NRO identifies three of Biden's deceptions.  Phillip Klein exposes Biden's falsehood regarding health care.  Biden claimed that giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs will "strengthen the Affordable Care Act — expand Medicare coverage and benefits — without costing taxpayers one additional penny."  Nonsense.  Klein points out that the Congressional Budget Office has twice concluded that "providing broad negotiating authority by itself would likely have a negligible effect on federal spending."  Yet, Biden claimed that the supposed savings would be enough to pay for an Obamacare expansion that would cost $200 billion, according to the White House "fact sheet" released earlier in the day.

Gillibrand mocked for calling child care, paid leave 'infrastructure'.  Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is getting flak after she tweeted examples of infrastructure that seemed to stretch the meaning of the word.  Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines infrastructure as "the system of public works of a country, state, or region," "the resources (such as personnel, buildings, or equipment) required for an activity," "the underlying foundation or basic framework (as of a system or organization)," or "the permanent installations required for military purposes."  Politically, it is often considered to refer to transportation, roads, bridges and items of that nature.  This quickly led to a barrage of mockery and criticism.  Some took an absurdist approach, implying that Gillibrand's tweet is removed from reality.  "Unicorns are infrastructure.  Love is infrastructure.  Herpes is infrastructure.  Everything is infrastructure," Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro tweeted.

Will You Be Drowned By Biden's Coming Tidal Wave Of Tax Hikes?  Joe Biden's massive $2 trillion "infrastructure plan" is in fact another giant tax hike disguised as a jobs program.  Even worse, the Bidenites pretend that the taxes will hit wealthy people and big corporations hard, while the spending will provide jobs for struggling workers.  Don't believe any of it.  First, a reality check.  Spending was up sharply last year, and will likely be up at least 50% this year.  Yet, even the tax hikes now being discussed won't come close to covering the spending increases.  Let's review:  During the pandemic year, the U.S. spent $6.5 trillion, a 47% surge in just one year.  This year, we've already added about $4 trillion in new spending.  Debt is now an unimaginable $30 trillion, and headed much higher.  And yes, we have to pay it off, even if we "owe it to ourselves," as some like to say.

The 10 Radical New Rules That Are Changing America.  There are 10 new ideas that are changing America, maybe permanently.  [#1] Money is a construct.  It can be created from thin air.  Annual deficits and aggregate national debt no longer matter much.  Prior presidents ran up huge annual deficits, but at least there were some concessions that the money was real and had to be paid back.  Not now.  As we near $30 trillion in national debt and 110 percent of annual GDP, our elites either believe permanent zero interest rates make the cascading obligation irrelevant, or the larger the debt, the more likely we will be forced to address needed income redistribution.

Yet Another Big Lie Behind Biden's $1.9 Trillion COVID Bill.  Last week, governors and mayors from around the country came to the White House with cups in hand for COVID aid and found a president eager to listen to their pleas of poverty.  "They've been working on their own in many cases," President Joe Biden said, promising to come to the rescue with $350 billion in federal "relief" funds.  It was a good act.  But back home, states across the country are reporting huge surpluses, thanks not only to previous federal COVID handouts (which totaled more than $400 billion) but because tax revenues are surging as the economy rapidly rebounds.  As the City Journal reports, "Undoubtedly some states and cities have faced challenges, but nationwide, state and local governments have seen tax revenue rebound to pre-pandemic levels, even as they have continued to receive a large influx of federal funds."

CNN Says Americans 'Unlikely' to See Higher Taxes Under Biden.  CNN is trying to hoodwink Americans into believing that their taxes won't increase under a Biden administration.  The network's latest article read like a press release by former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign staff:  "The vast majority of Americans are unlikely to see their taxes go up under President-elect Joe Biden, despite false claims by President Donald Trump to the contrary."  The article used the left-wing Tax Policy Center (TPC) as its source.  CNN Politics writer Katie Lobosco, in her piece headlined "Will your taxes go up under Biden?  It's unlikely," reiterated the false Biden campaign position that the tax plan "wouldn't raise individual taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 a year, which is more than 90% of taxpayers."  That flies directly in the face of a rare fact check that ABC's Jonathan Karl did on that same Biden claim.

Watch: Liberals Complain Trump Made Their Tax Returns Smaller, Then Reality Shows Up.  One of Donald Trump's key achievements in his first four years of office was passing a massive tax cut which lowered the rates for 80+% of Americans.  Despite that, Democrats have waged a relentless misinformation campaign purporting that the tax cuts only went to the rich and that the middle class were not helped.  That's objectively not true, but that hasn't stopped the left from showing they apparently have no idea how tax returns work.

Joe Biden's tax plan doesn't make much sense at all.  It's election season, so politicians are naturally going to spout off some pretty weird proposals.  Given what voters believe, it's not possible for every proposal to be useful and still appeal to us for our votes.  However, Joe Biden's tax proposals manage to be wrong in both theory and practice, which is pretty good going even by the low standards of politics.  The specific points that catch my eye (among the deep well of giveaways for favored constituencies, including carbon capture, child tax credits, and all the rest) are about corporate and capital income taxation.  The theoretically wrong proposal is that the corporate income tax should rise.  This is on the grounds that corporations should be paying in to support the country that supports them.  The thing is, companies don't pay taxes. [...] We can tax, in name, groups of people like a corporation, but it is only in name.  We're still taxing people in the end.

Lying PolitiFact Lies About Biden's Own Words on Raising Taxes.  A pro-Trump political ad quotes Joe Biden directly and the lying liars at the lying PolitiFact still rate it "mostly false."  Like most of the country, I hardly pay any attention to PolitiFact, or any of these fake fact checkers anymore.  Over the years, they have completely discredited themselves.  So, they no longer move the ball.  For a lot of years it was my job to expose them, at least until they were so discredited they could no longer move the ball.  Mission accomplished.

Warren's 'Wealth Tax' Wouldn't Bring in Nearly as Much Revenue as She Claims.  [Elizabeth] Warren claims the tax will bring in $3.7 trillion over 10 years.  The Wharton study reveals a more realistic number not based on fantasy-land assumptions:  $2.3 trillion.  Not only that, the tax will dramatically affect economic growth and shrink the wealth of the very people she claims to be helping:  the middle class.  Of course, Warren's proposal is political and her people made political assumptions about the projection.  But what makes her faulty numbers important is that she is going to spend that cash — and much more — on government programs like Medicare for All and "free" college tuition.

Elizabeth Warren on paying for expensive program: 'C'mon, there's always money...'.  In what ought to be a career-ending slip, facing a friendly questioner, Lily Eskelsen Garc'a, president of the National Education Association, her belief in a fantasy world where money can be endlessly spent came out.  Watch her brush off concern over funding an expensive education program with the words, "The way I see it, there's always, c'mon, there's always money.  It's there."  Juan and Evita Perón thought the same thing, and they ruined the economy of Argentina, a country that had enjoyed a standard of living comparable to that of the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, only to fall into a long-term decline that currently has it at roughly 20% of the U.S.'s per capita GDP.

Fake Wealth and Income Statistics.  Tendentious statistics are constantly put forth by various neo-Marxists trying to prove that American society is unjust and that confiscatory taxes should therefore be imposed on the wealthy.  The advocates of a wealth tax don't seem to be aware that we already have a 40% wealth tax imposed upon death — the estate tax.  The neo-Marxists often contrast the maximum 37% tax on earned income with the maximum 24% (technically 23.8%) tax on long-term capital gains.  But capital gains taxes are often a tax on inflation.

Elizabeth Warren's cruelty.  Warren's method is to tell voters that someone else will bear the costs.  She denies the obvious truth that our problems are inherently tough to solve and instead declares that they persist only because other politicians are bought and paid for.  The real problem with Warren's tale isn't that this is class warfare, although it certainly is that.  The real problem is, rather, that it is a lie.  Warren has championed "Medicare for all" as a way to cater to her party's left-wing base, but she's also trying to sell it to ordinary people.  She offers freedom from the injustice of insurance companies and the fear of being uninsured.  She tells us we'll never have to worry about another medical bill again.

Biden:  Warren's A Liar.  Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Friday [11/1/2019] accused Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) of making up the numbers for her recent Medicare for All cost estimate.  Biden went on the attack after PBS host Judy Woodruff repeated the Warren campaign's estimate that government run health care would only cost about $20 trillion.  "She's making it up," Biden said.  "She's making it up.  Look, nobody thinks it's $20 trillion.  It's between $30 and 40 trillion dollars.  Every major independent study that's gone out there — that's taken a look at this, there's no way — even Bernie, who talks about the need to raise middle class taxes — he can't even meet the cost of it."

Warren: Middle-Class Taxes Won't Go Up 'One Penny' for $52 Trillion Health Care Plan.  In a long-awaited plan released Friday [11/1/2019], Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) pledged to not raise middle-class taxes to pay for her proposed single-payer health care system.  After months of dodging questions about whether she would hike middle-class taxes to pay for Medicare for All, the 2020 candidate made a firm promise to voters about a $52 trillion system involving $20.5 trillion in new federal spending over the next 10 years.  "We don't need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny to finance Medicare for All," Warren wrote in a post detailing her proposal.

Democratic Debate: 10 Questions Left on the Cutting Room Floor.  [#1] About the Trump tax cuts, Democrats like Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., claim that 83% of the benefits would go to "the top 1%, richest people in this country, and the most powerful corporations."  But the Washington Post fact-checker said:  "The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that initially more than 80 percent of taxpayers would get a tax cut, with less than 5 percent getting a tax increase."  Why, then, do you keep restating what The Washington Post said isn't true?

Democratic Party presidential candidate are unqualified... and weird.  [Scroll down]  Elizabeth Warren, AKA Pocahontas, says she will fund Medicare for all by taxing the "wealthy and big corporations."  Even Joe Biden found this ludicrous and unbelievable.  She refused to answer the question whether she will raise taxes on the middle class to fund Medicare for all.  We all know that tax rates have to be raised on all taxpayers to fund Medicare for all.  All the candidates have proposals to "fix health care."  Nobody asked the candidates why we need to "fix health care," since Obama supposedly fixed it with his Obamacare.  We were told by Obama, Biden, and Pelosi that Obamacare would reduce premiums and insure the uninsured and that we could keep our doctors.  Evidently, Obama, Biden, Pelosi, and the rest of the gang lied to us.  Shocking.

Elizabeth Warren's stubborn dishonesty on raising middle-class taxes.  Sen. Elizabeth Warren deservedly drew heat from several rivals over her stubborn refusal to acknowledge that implementing a $32 trillion plan to provide free health insurance to everybody would require increasing middle-class taxes.  But since she keeps trying to make the same bad argument, it's worth reviewing what's so dishonest about it.  Warren, whenever she's asked about whether middle-class taxes would go up, argues that costs would only go up for corporations and the wealthy, but "costs would go down for the middle class."  Essentially, she's trying to make the case that because middle-class Americans would be getting free healthcare, their costs would go down overall.

Liberals Don't 'Invest'; They Spend Other People's Money.  Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-avowed socialist, sometimes sounds like a multibillionaire entrepreneur when promoting his political agenda.  He intends, you see, to "invest" a great deal of money.  Of course, unlike a billionaire entrepreneur, Sanders won't be investing his own money.  He will be "investing" yours.  Nor does Sanders intend to be a mere retailer.  He is promising to make "massive investments" in a "Green New Deal" that will result in "a wholesale transformation of our society."

Bernie: 'A Lot of People in the Country Would Be Delighted to Pay More in Taxes'.  Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said on Wednesday night [6/12/2019] during a CNN interview that "a lot of people" would love to pay more in taxes if it meant that they got government-run health care.

No, Tax Cuts Aren't Causing the Latest Deficit Spike.  The Treasury Department reported a $208 billion deficit for the month of May — which is $61 billion higher than May 2018.  To put that in perspective, the deficit for the entire year of 2007 was $161 billion.  In the first eight months of the current fiscal year, red ink has already reached $738 billion.  Even adjusting for inflation, the total annual federal deficit has exceeded that only six times in the nation's history (five of them under President Obama).  Not surprisingly, the Republican tax cuts are taking the blame for this year's extraordinary deficits.

Over $10,000 to Dems, $650 to GOP: Just How 'Non-Partisan' Is The Congressional Research Service?  Late last month, the Congressional Research Service released a report entitled "The Economic Effects of the 2017 Tax Revision:  Preliminary Observations."  "On the whole, the growth effects tend to show a relatively small (if any) first-year effect on the economy," the CRS found, adding that "Although examining the growth rates cannot indicate the effects of the tax cut on GDP, it does tend to rule out very large effects in the near term."  A number of media outlets, as could be expected, went apoplectic, declaring that the Trump tax cuts have nothing to do with the booming economy, and thus also won't make up any of the revenue lost.  With the supply-side tax cuts of Calvin Coolidge, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush all followed by economic booms, you would think the doubters' faith in the religion of coincidence would be shaken.

Washington Post Gives Biden 4 Pinocchios for Claiming Only the Rich Got Trump Tax Cuts.  One of the misperceptions of the tax cut is that because tax refunds have been relatively flat when compared to last year that most people didn't get a tax cut without taking into consideration the adjustment in the tax withholding tables which added roughly $25 per week to the average paycheck.  A point the media rarely mentions.  The Post contacted the Biden campaign and received the standard line about the tax cuts being a giveaway for the wealthy and big corporations and gave Biden the maximum four Pinocchios for misstating the facts.

MMT: The Latest Liberal Economic Fantasy.  The new economics is called Modern Monetary Theory or MMT for short.  MMT is gaining traction among high-profile Democrats and other liberals that are looking for ways to finance social and ecological programs that they hope to implement in the future. [...] Critics say that MMT is neither monetary nor a theory.  It more closely resembles a political opportunity, since it puts everything in the hands of enlightened politicians.  Its promoters keep the theory sufficiently vague to avoid close scrutiny.  They tend to stay outside of the mainstream economic journals and inside social media.

How Democrats misled the nation about Trump's tax cuts.  As even The New York Times (yes, the anti-Trump Times) noted, Tax Policy Center figures show 65 percent of taxpayers got tax cuts last year, thanks to the 2017 Trump tax reforms; just 6 percent had to pay more.  Yet in early April, SurveyMonkey found only 40 percent of Americans believed they saw savings, and only 20 percent felt sure they had.  An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last month found even fewer, just 17 percent, thought their families would pay less.  Why are so many people under the wrong impression about their own taxes?

9 Apocalyptic Lies Fed To Americans About The Republican Tax Bill.  Monday [4/15/2019] is the first Tax Day under the new Republican tax bill passed in December 2017, and the results are not what Democrats and their media apparatus predicted.  Many Americans are discovering that they are not only alive and well, but indeed paying less taxes.  As Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley pointed out in The New York Times, there is a disparity between what Americans thought they would be paying the IRS this year, and what they actually paid.  This myth, "appears to flow from a sustained — and misleading — effort by liberal opponents of the law to brand it as a broad middle-class tax increase."

Vox Writer Praises Progressives for Misleading Americans on Tax Cuts.  Vox writer Matthew Yglesias praised progressive groups for misleading Americans about their taxes Monday [4/8/2019].  In a tweet, Yglesias praised the "messaging success" over President Donald Trump's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.  The president signed the bill into law in December 2017.  At the time, then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) said the bill would save families making $73,000 per year more than $2,000.  "[P]rogressive groups did a really good job of convincing people that Trump raised their taxes," Yglesias said.

Newsrooms that rushed to report tax refunds were smaller this year go silent on IRS data showing refunds have increased.  Tax refunds are up from where they were this time last year by 1.3 percent following the fourth week of the 2019 filing season, according to new Internal Revenue Service data.  To be more specific, the average tax refund has increased to $3,143 from $3,103 last February, according to cumulative statistics comparing the 2018 and 2019 filing seasons.  Oddly enough, certain newsrooms have responded to this development with total silence.  I say "odd," because it was just a few weeks ago that these same newsrooms rushed to report that tax refunds were smaller this year, suggesting either implicitly or explicitly that the decrease was tied to the Republican Party's tax reform bill.

Democrats Are Misleading Americans About Their Tax Refund.  Democrats looking to score points against President Donald Trump this week focused attention on data from the government that showed refund checks going out to early filers were smaller than they were a year ago.  Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) falsely claimed that smaller refunds indicated that the tax cuts amounted to a "middle-class tax hike."  The smaller refund checks, however, were not indicators that taxes have gone up.  In fact, two-thirds of American households got a tax cut this year.  For middle-class families with children, over 80 percent got tax cuts.

Cuomo blames federal tax law for $2.3 billion New York budget deficit.  New York State is facing a $2.3 billion budget deficit, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo believes it's largely due to the Trump administration's tax reforms which, on the "flip side," have taxed the rich and may be encouraging wealthy residents to leave.  President Trump's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which takes effect for the 2018 tax year, places a cap on the state and local tax deduction (known as SALT) that Americans can take.  Residents of largely blue states with relatively high state and local taxes are adversely affected, Cuomo says, by the new cap of a $10,000 deduction.  New York state's average SALT deduction was around $22,000 before the law changed.

Trump's Tax Cut 'Scam' Created 1.3 Million New Jobs, New CBO Data Show.  During the tax cut debate in 2017, Republicans argued that the cuts would at least partially pay for themselves by spurring economic growth.  Democrats said they were nothing more than a giveaway to the rich.  The latest data from the Congressional Budget Office makes it clear that the GOP had it right.

The Importance of Getting History Right.  [Scroll down]  Another lie, born of ignorance, is that the American revolution was merely a tax revolt.  The idea is to minimize our history down to financial considerations: dialectical materialism.  But anyone familiar with the Currency Act and the Intolerable Acts knows full well that more was at stake.  Many of the colonials were descended from people whose ancestors had suffered under British law and how it had reduced large sections of Ireland and some parts of Scotland to abject poverty.  They were determined not to become New World vassals.  But if one wants to minimize the treasure that is our Constitution, then reduce American history to tax law.

No, The Deficit Isn't 'Soaring,' And Yes, Tax Revenues Are At Record Highs.  In the first two months of the new fiscal year, tax revenues are up.  But so is the deficit.  Why?  Because spending continues to outpace revenues.  So why do tax cuts keep getting blamed?

Skin In The Game.  The argument that tax cuts reduce federal revenues can be disposed of quite easily.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, revenues from federal income taxes were $76 billion higher in the first half of this year than they were in the first half of 2017.  The Treasury Department says it expects that federal revenues will continue to exceed last year's for the rest of 2018.  Despite record federal revenues, 2018 will see a massive deficit, perhaps topping $1 trillion.  Our massive deficit is a result not of tax cuts but of profligate congressional spending that outruns rising tax revenues.  Grossly false statements about tax cuts' reducing revenue should be put to rest in the wake of federal revenue increases seen with tax cuts during the Kennedy, Reagan and Trump administrations.

Yes, lefties, tax cuts work.  They are actually working extremely well here in the U.S., and the additional growth from a new one will obviously give the government higher revenue in the long run.  It is too bad that both parties spend too much on government, but revenue is not the problem.  Their overspending can be seen in the deficit, which has increased because of the massive debt run-up under President Obama and previous presidents.  Then there's the Federal Reserve: instead of doing anything to check Obama's overspending, it held rates at zero and allowed Obama's pathetic economy to go on.  But as economist Herbert Stein has noted, anything that can't go on will stop.  So now they are raising rates to get inflation under control, this after years of allowing Obama to print money.

No, Tax Cuts Are Not Driving Deficits — It's The Spending.  Are President Trump's massive tax cuts what's driving federal deficits upward.  Everyone says so.  But, it's not true.  It's just a way for lawmakers to distract the public while they crank up the spending machine.  Just like the Senate did this week.

Open Borders Are Not Libertarian So Long As America Is A Welfare State.  On social media, libertarians tend to argue that immigrants, even illegals, pay taxes too, through their rent to their property-tax-paying landlords.  The average annual per child expenditure of an American public school is $12,000, and as high as $29,000 in Washington, D.C. and other jurisdictions.  The idea that many immigrants, living crowded into low tax assessment properties, pay anything like $12,000 annually in property taxes per child they commit to the local school is prima facie ridiculous.

Elizabeth Warren stands by call to overturn income tax cuts.  Despite the recent boost in the economy, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren isn't budging on her position to increase taxes.  "Let's be clear, the Republicans just gave away a trillion and a half dollars in tax cuts to billionaires and giant corporations," Warren told the Herald yesterday [7/28/2018].  "Those tax decisions, they're not about numbers, they're about values.  They're about who you believe the government should work for."

Fed Up in Seattle.  Don't believe the hype that "Amazon killed the Seattle head tax," the new levy that the city recently passed on businesses to fund an affordable-housing initiative.  The truth behind the city council's stunning reversal — repealing the tax by a 7-2 vote, just four weeks after passing it 9-0 — is that Seattle citizens have erupted in frustration against the city's tax-and-spend political class that has failed to address the homelessness crisis, despite record new revenues.  As recently as a few years ago, it seemed as if Seattle voters largely viewed our hyper-progressive city council as a harmless oddity in an otherwise tolerant, thriving, liberal city.  But times have changed.  Now, according to recent public polling, 83 percent of Seattle voters are dissatisfied with how the council has addressed homelessness, 65 percent believe that the local government hasn't used new tax revenues effectively, and 63 percent believe that the city has enough money to solve the problem but isn't pursuing the right policies.

Nancy Pelosi: 'Democrats believe you must pay as you go'.  Democrats will lower the federal debt if they retake control of the government, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday [5/10/2018], even as they seek to enact major infrastructure spending and other new programs while undoing the GOP tax law.  "Democrats believe you must pay as you go," the California Democrat said at an event hosted by the fiscally conservative Peter G. Peterson Foundation.  New government investments must be offset in the budget, she said.  Pelosi steered clear of saying how Democratic initiatives, such as a new federal education and housing funding, would be paid for.

The Editor says...
If the "Democrats believe you must pay as you go," why is the national debt over $21 trillion?

No, The U.S. Isn't 'Undertaxed'.  One of the talking points Democrats and the left often drag out to justify reversing the Trump tax cuts is that the U.S. is "undertaxed" compared with other nations.  A new study shows that's false.

Keeping My Earnings Is Not a 'Subsidy'.  One might argue about the efficacy of our state's and nation's tax code and how its myriad tax deductions are arranged, but that doesn't mean that keeping our own money is the equivalent of a subsidy.  I've heard reasonable arguments for reducing tax deductions for home ownership in exchange for reducing other taxes. [...] Hammering people with a massive tax bill upon a home's sale will only reduce mobility and limit the number of resale houses that become available, but tax hikers don't often worry about the Law of Unintended Consequences.  But this mischaracterization of "subsidy" is widespread.  If we're all subsidized, then no one is subsidized.  It's all moral equivalence, at that point.

What a Crumby Thing for Cory Booker to Say.  Never mind the eight years during which President Obama accumulated more debt than all prior presidents combined.  [Senator] Booker insists that keeping too much of our paychecks and not the government spending too much is what drives up the national debt.  If Booker has any plans for cutting spending outside the military, they are the only thing in Washington that has not been leaked.  Letting people keep more of what they earn is not "spending," and companies giving more of what they earn to their employees is not spending, either.  Booker is typical of those who believe that all money belongs to a government that decides how much of it we will be allowed to keep in exchange for our votes.

Tell the Truth on Tariffs!  While totally free trade is an ideal and a goal, it is impossible to accomplish without becoming wholly interdependent on other nations.  There will always be another country capable of driving your domestic industry into the dirt on some product or another, as no one nation can be the most efficient and best producer of everything that nation requires.  Because some industries cannot be outsourcedwithout risk to national security — even to friendly nations — trade representatives have always balanced imports and exports of these products through the use of taxation (tariffs) to both protect the viability of their domestic industries and to ensure a place for their own exports in the economies of other nations.  While a simplistic explanation, it covers the basic function of tariffs.  Throughout history, administrations and regimes have misused tariffs, sparking "trade wars."  And it is true that these disruptions have proven costly to both sides, but to say "no one wins in a trade war" is patently false.

New York Times issues embarrassing correction after botching story attacking Trump's tax plan.  The New York Times issued an embarrassing correction after a report that attacked President Donald Trump's recently passed tax plan got the numbers about as wrong as could be.  The lengthy Feb. 23 feature, headlined, "Get to Know the New Tax Code While Filling Out This Year's 1040," sought to detail how Trump's tax plan would hurt middle-class families.  A hypothetical couple — christened Sam and Felicity Taxpayer — would see their tax bill rise by nearly $4,000, according to the story.  Then came the correction saying the family would actually see taxes go down.

Tax cuts and more money in your pocket is nothing but a 'dark cloud' for Democrats.  Last week President Trump's tax cuts started to get personal as people across the country logged into their bank accounts and began to find increases in their paychecks.  The doom and gloom tax cut scenario the Democrats tried to sell the American people started to become exposed as nothing more than highly charged rhetoric.  This from a party desperate to justify why not a single one of them voted in favor of letting people keep more of their money.  As people's wallets began expanding this week it just got real.  More money back in the hands of people of every income level — brought to you by President Trump and the Republicans in Congress.

A thousand dollars is mere chicken feed to a limousine liberal.
Wasserman Schultz joins Pelosi in mocking size of $1K cash bonuses linked to tax cuts.  Florida congresswoman and former DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz joined House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday to ridicule the economic repercussions of recent tax reform legislation.  An audience at Florida Atlantic University witnessed Ms. Pelosi double down this morning on her recent "crumb" criticism of cash bonuses given out by companies like Apple, AT&T, Boeing, Comcast, Disney, Home Depot, Fiat Chrysler, Southwest Airlines, Verizon, Wal-Mart and Well Fargo.  The event, which was sponsored by the group Not One Penny, included Ms. Wasserman Schultz's assertion that $1,000 doesn't go "very far for almost anyone."

Immigration Is Destroying the Welfare State.  Recall how the Democrats supported President Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership, a "free trade" deal that would have gutted American industries.  And it is Democrats who oppose President Trump's attempts to stop illegal immigration, which hurts America's poor.  The Democrats don't care about American workers.  They care about winning elections.  At this point, the chorus of "progressive" rhetoric reaches a fever pitch.  "But we need immigrants to support the welfare state!  We need immigrants to pay for Social Security!"  Saying it does not make it so.  In truth, immigration is destroying the welfare state, in America and throughout the West.  This is happening because immigrants receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes.  Of course, this is not true for every immigrant — some never collect government handouts — but it is true for the overall immigrant population.  Studies from across the Western world prove this point.

Newly Released Arizona Crime Data Just Shattered a Key Liberal Narrative on Immigration.  If you're going to do a study attempting to prove the general law-abidingness of illegal immigrants, wouldn't you want data that compiles actual illegal immigrant crime rates?  Considering the fact that legal immigrant crime is indeed low, any study using data that lumps legal and illegal immigrants together is bound to be skewed.

Poll Shows Public Waking Up to Media Lies About GOP Tax Plan.  Now that a little thing called economic reality has overtaken months of dishonest media reporting about the Republican tax bill signed into law by President Trump last month, a plurality of 47 percent support the bill, while only 34 percent remain opposed.  This is a huge (and predicable) turnaround when compared to those polls released in the heart of the media campaign to kill the tax bill.

Cutting Through the Media's Falsehoods About 'Dreamers'.  When members of Congress battled over the budget, some threatened to block funding unless Congress provided amnesty to illegal alien Dreamers who benefited from President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Donald Trump announced he is ending.  Conscientious members of Congress should not give in to this threat.  Amnesty will encourage even more illegal immigration — just as the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act did.  That bill provided citizenship to 2.7 million illegal aliens.  Yet by 1995, another 5.7 million illegal aliens were residing in the U.S.  Many of them crossed the border to join their newly legalized friends and family.  Others, no doubt, believed that since the U.S. provided amnesty once, it would do so again.  However Congress decides to deal with Dreamers, it should be based on the real demographics of the DACA populace, not the glamorized image typically presented by the media.

Still Looking for Tax Disaster, Democrats Are in for a Surprise.  The Democrats and their media allies did everything they could to defeat Trump's tax cuts and reforms.  They continually lied to the public in a bid to make them believe that less than half of the taxpayers would actually get cuts and that the bill was meant to benefit only big, rich corporations.  Therefore, we got all sorts of articles, obviously fed to journalists by left-wing think-tanks and Democratic politicos, claiming that the tax cuts aren't good or aren't performing as promised.  So, two weeks into a ten-year program, we are now hearing whining that all the promises of the broad-based reform haven't been fulfilled yet.

7 reasons pope is wrong about immigration.  I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of being lectured by Pope Francis about migrants and refugees.  In his latest message on the subject, he suggested national laws strictly controlling the influx of migrants and refugees is akin to "hostility" and "sin." [...] Has the pope welcomed refugees and migrants into Vatican City, which he controls?  If so, how many?  And, if he has, why is he limiting the number?  Vatican City is considered a sovereign nation-state.  It is a wealthy one that considers its own security seriously.  Why would the pope lecture other nation-states about immigration policy without first setting an example with his own?

San Francisco plutocrat Nancy Pelosi sniffs disdain at Americans' tax bonuses, calling them 'crumbs'.  The only thing worse than Senator Elizabeth Warren having to pretend she likes the tax cuts she vehemently opposed in Congress is wealthy House minority leader Nancy Pelosi looking down her nose in disdain at the millions of Americans celebrating their tax bonuses.  She actually called the spectacle "pathetic" and the bonuses "crumbs."

Nancy Pelosi's elitist Democrats — America, this is the party of the rich, sneering at the poor.  Here in my home state of California, in response to President Trump signing the GOP tax reform bill into law, state Senate Democratic leader Kevin de Leon has taken up a new cause: fighting for the right of the richest Californians to evade their taxes.  It's almost unbelievable — but true.  De Leon (who is also the leading challenger to Sen. Dianne Feinstein in her primary battle as she seeks re-election this year) has proposed setting up a new so-called charity that would enable the Silicon Valley and Hollywood elite to claw back their losses from the Trump administration's new tax reform law. [...] Another prominent California Democrat also revealed her true colors this past week over taxes: our old friend, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.  She dismissed $1,000 worker bonuses given in response to the GOP tax cuts as "crumbs."

Ingraham Takes on Pelosi for Saying Companies Just Giving Out 'Crumbs' After Tax Cuts.  Laura Ingraham took on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for saying companies' bonuses to workers following the passage of the Republican tax cuts are mere "crumbs."  "Maybe it's a crumb if you live in Pacific Heights or the Sea Cliff neighborhood of San Francisco and you're married to Paul Pelosi, maybe then it's a crumb.  But for most people it's real money," she said.

Waste Management CEO reacts to Nancy Pelosi 'crumbs' comments on bonuses.  Waste Management CEO James Fish responded to Rep. Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) criticism of bonuses given to employees following the passing of the Republican-backed tax reform bill.  In an exclusive interview with FOX Business' Liz Claman, Fish said the bonuses will be go to drivers, landfill workers and customer service agents.  "We are giving it to those folks not just because not only are they hard working, but they don't participate in our annual bonus which typically are for salary employees," Fish said during an interview on "Countdown to the Closing Bell" Friday [1/12/2018].  The House Minority Leader on Thursday called the recent wave of corporate bonus given to workers as a result of the Republican tax bill as "crumbs."

Ex-Obama Treasury secretary:  Tax cuts 'leaving us broke'.  Former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew expressed concerns about the new GOP tax law's impact on the debt, arguing that it is "leaving us broke" and could lead to cuts in social safety net programs.  "I fear that the next shoe to drop is going to be an attack on the most vulnerable in our society," Lew said in a Bloomberg interview.  "How are we going to pay for the deficit caused by the tax cut?  You're going to see proposals to cut health insurance from poor people, to take basic food support away from poor people, to attack Medicare and Social Security."

The Editor says...
Memo to the former Treasury Secretary:  Deficits are not caused by tax cuts.  Deficits are caused by spending borrowed money, mostly on stuff we don't really need.  Call me if you need further advice.

Virginia Dem:  GOP Government 'Dangerous to All Living Creatures,' Especially Federal Workers.  Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) urged Congress before the holiday break to protect federal workers in the event of a government shutdown, adding that a "united" federal government under Republican leadership is "dangerous to all living creatures."  "They've already been asked to sacrifice in a way no other group in America has been asked to sacrifice, contributing well over $200 billion to deficit reduction," he said on a conference call Dec. 20 with American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) National President David Cox Sr.

In Attacking Trump Tax Cuts as 'Theft,' Democrats Prove They Don't Believe in Private Property.  When Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate passed historic tax reform that will decrease taxes for more than 80 percent of Americans, Democrats branded the tax cut a "heist."  Terms such as "looting," "theft," and "heist" suggested that Republicans weren't giving Americans back more of their hard-earned money, but rather stealing from the poor to give to the rich.  This rhetoric is revealing — it shows that Democrats no longer believe in private property, a cornerstone of American values and the basis on which President Abraham Lincoln argued against slavery.  "Shamefully, Republicans were cheering against the children as they rob from their future and ransack the middle class to reward the rich," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tweeted, adding the hashtag #GOPTaxScam.  She was far from alone in adopting such rhetoric.

Attn. Nancy Pelosi!  CBS News finds families who WON'T be killed by the tax bill.  You know it's bad for the Dems when even the mainstream media can't give an assist.  Here's a CBS News story that did NOT cooperate with the Democrat narrative of "Armageddon" and mass misery.

Danger in 2018 for the Party of the Rich (Democrats).  [Scroll down]  According to the the Center for Responsive Politics, she [Nancy Pelosi] has a net worth of $196 million.  And that was in May 2017.  Since then there's been another 10+% run-up in the stock market, so that would conservatively push her well over the $200 million mark thanks, ironically, to the policies of Donald Trump.  (Okay, not entirely, but unquestionably to some extent.)  Over the last decade or so, American politics has had something of a role reversal.  The Democrats have increasingly become the Party of the Rich — Silicon Valley, Hollywood, media, a good swath of Wall Street — making Pelosi's statement and similar remarks made by Schumer particularly absurd.  Moreover, it is well known — but not well known enough yet — that what Pelosi said was a straight-out lie.

The Democrats Stink of Weakness and Defeat.  Armageddon, she called it.  That was Nancy Pelosi, the insane woman who is somehow in charge of the Democrats' House caucus, speaking about the just-passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.  The bill would later pass in the House, largely on the same party lines it's passed throughout the legislative process, due to procedural necessities, Wednesday [12/20/2017].  [...] We wouldn't take Pelosi seriously, because it's impossible to truly do so.  After all, she's completely crazy and it's obvious to anyone who bothers to observe both the gibberish emanating from her lips and the unstable body language surrounding it.  Except that the unhinged sentiments she offered as a reaction to the passage of a bill which will provide a tax cut to 80 percent of the American public aren't just hers.  They belong to the entire Democratic Party.

GOP tax bill causes Nancy Pelosi to lose remaining fragment of her mind.  The GOP tax bill is now very close to passage, and as that became clear last night, Nancy Pelosi put on her spelunking gear for another deep descent into insanity and self-unawareness: [...] A warning about plutocracy from a super-wealthy member of Congress who's been in power for decades?  Pelosi might be trying to convince people the tax bill will cost them their lives, but it clearly has yet to even take away her unintentional sense of humor.

Blame entitlements — not the tax bill — for blowing up the deficit.  Writing in The Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria recently called the GOP tax bill the worst piece of legislation in modern history.  Why?  Because, he claims, it will starve the federal government of the resources it needs for public investments in infrastructure and research.  But Zakaria's assessment is misleading.  He is right that a budget crunch is now underway and will intensify in the years ahead, but the primary cause is not tax cuts.  Left out of Zakaria's account is the role that runaway entitlement spending is playing — and will continue to play — in squeezing other government programs.  If his main concern is inadequate public investment in annually appropriated domestic accounts (sometimes called "domestic discretionary spending"), he should focus his ire on President Obama and the many other Democratic and Republican politicians who have favored consumption-oriented entitlements at the expense of all other public priorities.  Left unchecked, entitlement spending will overwhelm the federal government in coming years — with or without the GOP's relatively small tax cut.

Unhinged Pelosi Claims Tax Bill 'Does Violence' To Vision Of Founding Fathers.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spewed utter nonsense on the House floor on Tuesday, hysterically claiming that the Republican's tax plan "does violence to the vision of our Founders."  Pelosi railed against Republican lawmakers in her speech, decrying the bill as a morally obscene "scam" designed to "install a permanent plutocracy."  "This GOP tax scam is simply theft, monumental, brazen theft from the American middle class and from every person who aspires to reach it," Pelosi said. "

Foolish Dems have set themselves up for tax cut blowback.  The unquestioning media support that Democrats receive for their narratives — regardless of their truth or falsity — has led congressional Democrats out on a limb that President Trump is about to saw off, when he signs the tax reform bill.  Unlike foreign policy or regulatory reform, people pay much more attention to their personal experience than to political rhetoric.  In fact, voters care so much about the economy that they will see that the Democrats have been blowing smoke at them.  James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal calls it "The February Surprise" — the increased paychecks that the vast majority of American workers will experience in February, when the tax reform bill is implemented by IRS issuance of withholding guidelines in January.  The contrast between the positive personal results and the extreme rhetoric of Democrats opposing it will come home to voters in a very personal way.  Yesterday [12/19/2017], on the House floor, Nancy Pelosi, in the words of Lifezette, went off the deep end, complete with goofy signs.

Five ways the media tries to convince us tax cuts are bad.  To hear the media tell it, tax cuts are Bad For You and you won't like the result.  Pay no attention to the fact that the cost of living is up, the government is bigger, incomes have stagnated, large corporations are no longer creating jobs, and the U.S. hasn't had a major tax cut since 1986.  Somehow, we are all supposed to believe tax cuts which put more of our own money in our pockets, will make us miserable.  It's the most fallacious collection of up-is-down arguments ever assembled.

Pelosi: GOP Congress 'Robbing from Future by Increasing Debt;' She Upped Debt $5T in 4 Years.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, during whose four-year speakership the debt increased by more than $5 trillion, said at her press briefing today that the Republican-controlled Congress is "robbing from the future by increasing the debt."  Pelosi made the remark as part of her criticism of the Republican tax-reform plan.  "This is who they are," Pelosi said.  "This is what they came here to do:  tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the middle class, at the expense of the health and well-being of the American people.  Robbing from the future by increasing the debt."

That Democratic rhetoric about taxing the rich?  It's a con.  Democrats have asserted for years that the rich aren't paying enough in taxes.  In her Democratic National Convention speech in 2016, Hillary Clinton put it in the party's characteristically way, saying "Wall Street, corporations, and the super-rich are going to start paying their fair share of taxes."  Never mind that, according to the most recent data, the "1 percent" pay more than 25 percent of all federal tax revenue, more than the bottom 60 percent of income earners combined.  Democrats are usually loathe to give a specific number, but whatever the rich are paying, it isn't enough.

The GOP tax plan is not the apocalypse liberals think it is.  Liberals have some reservations about this tax bill that just passed Congress.  And when I say reservations, I mean reservations for a heavy-duty rubber room at the nearest lunatic asylum.  For tinkering around with some details of the tax code and decreasing the bill many Americans pay to Washington each year, "The GOP is monstrous; their policies kill, starve & maim," wrote actor-comedian Rob Delaney.  Josh Gad, that cuddly snowman from "Frozen" turned tax wonk, tweeted, "If you are not a billionaire, today should very well be marked as one of the most disgraceful acts in modern political history.  Madness won."  Madness certainly won over Delaney, who is now urging people to join the "Democratic socialists."

Pelosi: GOP tax proposal 'the worst bill in the history' of Congress.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared unequivocally on Monday that the GOP tax overhaul is the worst legislation ever considered by Congress.  "I have said that this was stiff competition by some of the other things they have put forth, is the worst bill in the history of the United States Congress," Pelosi said during House floor debate on the tax proposal.  Pelosi cited the rushed process and impact on the deficit to justify her assertion.  [Video clip]

How Democrats Corrupt English To Create Hysteria.  [Scroll down]  Liberal columnists, for example, will earnestly argue that Republicans, who at this moment control the Senate, the House of Representatives, and White House thanks to our free and fair elections, are acting undemocratically when passing bills.  As you know, democracy means raising taxes on the rich.  Just ask all the folks who told us democracy died over the weekend.  But the most obvious and ubiquitous of the Left's contorted contentions about the tax bill deliberately muddles the concept of giving and the concept of not taking enough.  This distortion is so embedded in contemporary rhetoric that I'm not sure most of the foot soldiers even think it's odd to say anymore.  "You really shouldn't lower everyone's taxes because it creates deficits and makes harder to expand important programs like Medicaid" doesn't have quite the same kick as "You're killing the poor!"  Whatever you make of the separate tax bills the House and Senate have passed, though, the authors do not take one penny from anyone.  In fact, no spending is being cut (unfortunately).  Not one welfare program is being block-granted.  Not one person is losing a subsidy.  It's just a wide-ranging tax cut without any concurrent spending cuts.

Sick and Tired of Schumer and Others Continually Lying about Tax Cuts and Debt.  What makes me sicker is that almost all reporters just repeat Schumer's talking points as if they are factual.  They repeat the outright lies over and over again, and then after indoctrinating the readers with pure garbage, they take a poll of fewer than 1,000 people, skewed with more Democrats than Republicans, to show that the people aren't in favor of reform.  Then they run the poll results as if they are somehow factual news.  Reporters should be truly ashamed of themselves for pushing an agenda instead of ever even considering reporting actual results of previous tax cuts.

Senate Bill Kills Obamacare's Taxes on the Poor.  It was as inevitable as, well, death and taxes that the Democrats would react to the Senate tax reform bill with public lamentation, rending of garments, and portentous declarations about the death of the Republic.  It was no surprise, then, that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) charged the Republicans with "tearing down our democracy" or that Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) also accused them of "undermining democracy."  In reality, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is among the best pieces of legislation produced by either house of Congress in decades, not least because it eliminates the individual mandate and medical expense taxes

The Latest Tax Cut Lie:  The Senate Bill Will Hurt The Poor.  "Senate GOP tax bill hurts the poor more than originally thought, CBO finds."  That's the headline in the Washington Post describing a Congressional Budget Office report released on Sunday [11/26/2017].  The story claims that the "Republican tax plan gives substantial tax cuts and benefits to Americans earning more than $100,000 a year, while the nation's poorest would be worse off."  Later, the Post story talks about the bill's "harsh impact on the poor."  This conveniently fits with the Democrats' evergreen talking point on tax cuts — that they benefit the rich at the expense of the poor.  But is it true?  [No.]  First of all, the CBO doesn't describe the Senate bill as being "harsh" to the poor.  That's the spin put on by the reporter.

The Tired Canard of 'Tax Cuts for the Rich'.  Behold a tax plan, or more precisely, two tax bills, one of the House signature, the other of the Senate.  I'm told that there are all kinds of juicy (or disastrous, depending on whom you ask) bits in it, but what stands out to the casual observer is the top line.  The House version defines four income tax brackets, topping out at a rate of 39.6%, while the Senate proposes seven, with a top rate of 38.5.  Apparently, this is the best we can expect from a federal government supposedly dominated by small-government Republicans.  Yet the Democrats weep, gnash their teeth, rend their garments and exhibit other well-rehearsed expressions of impending Armageddon. [...] Democrats shed nary a crocodile tear for the Deficit when it was their guy blowing it up for eight years.

Democrats Don't Let Facts Get In The Way Of Criticizing Tax Reform.  When trying to condemn the House GOP tax relief plan, Democrats "spread far and wide the false claim that families making less than $86,100 on average will face a hefty tax hike;" a claim The Washington Post gave four Pinocchios. [...] According to The Washington Post, Democrats have "falsely claimed" that the House tax relief bill would raise taxes on a significant portion of middle-class families. [...] Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) claimed that he had spoken to "all the [New York] Republicans" and they told him Republican leadership was "forcing" them to vote for the House bill. [...] A number of Senate Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), claimed that the Senate tax relief bill was "kicking 13 million people off health insurance."

Fact Check:  Everything About This Sally Kohn Tweet About Tax Reform is Incorrect.  Liberal activist Sally Kohn — who is delightful in person, but wrong about almost everything — tweeted an attack on the GOP tax plan yesterday, urging her followers to [denounce] Republican defenses of their proposal.  Basically everything in her tweet was wrong.

Democrat Fundraising Letter Tied Tax Cuts To Neo-Nazis.  Democrats certainly don't appear to have an issue with using fear to fundraise.  A Senate Majority PAC mailer with an enclosed letter from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tied together the Kremlin and neo-Nazis with corporate tax cuts.  "This Must Stop," the mailer says above the words, "Corporate Tax Cuts.  Discrimination.  Kremlin.  Medicaid Cuts.  Bribes.  Repealing Health Care.  Neo-Nazis."

Four Pinocchios:
Senate Democrats falsely claim GOP tax plan will raise taxes for most working-class families.  [Scroll down]  But notice the funny thing about this calculation:  Only a small percentage (6.5 percent) of the nearly 122 million households in the bottom three quintiles will actually face a tax increase.  Meanwhile, more than 97 million (80 percent) will receive a tax cut.  Doing the math the same way the JEC staff did, we come up with an average tax cut of about $450 for those 97 million households.  Indeed, at the far end of the chart, you will see that every quintile on average receives a tax cut — not a tax increase.

WaPo Tears Apart Dem Talking Point That Tax Cuts Only Benefit Wealthy.  The Washington Post soundly debunked the claim, made by numerous Democratic lawmakers, that the GOP tax reform bill will result in a tax increase for middle class households in a fact check published Thursday.  A number of prominent Democratic lawmakers have publicly claimed the tax reform bill, scheduled to be released Thursday, will result in an average tax increase of $794 for households making up to $86,100 annually.  WaPo fact checkers traced the claim back to a report produced by Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee, that predicts that some 8 million households making less than 86,100 per year will see their taxes increased.  "If enacted, the Republican tax reform proposal would saddle 8 million households that earn up to $86,100 with an average tax increase of $794 — a substantial expense for working families," the report reads.

Associated Press Says:  Don't Cut Taxes!  The Associated Press is one of many "news" outlets that has gone into overt opposition, now that we have a Republican rather than a Democrat in the White House.  Today's AP "Top News" feature is headlined:  Doubts arise on whether corporate tax cut would boost growth.  The passive voice is generally a giveaway.  Where, exactly, are doubts "arising"?

The Big 3 Tax Cut Lies That Democrats Keep Telling.  With President Trump turning his attention to tax reform, Democrats are busy dusting off their shopworn claims about federal income taxes.  Almost nothing they say about taxes is true.

Unstable: Obamacare bailout in NH.  It's not a tax.  It's not a fee.  It's an "assessment."  The New Hampshire Department of Insurance wants to charge health insurance companies a $36.8 million assessment to fund a reinsurance pool in order to prop up the state's failing health care exchange.  "To call it a tax is misstating what it really is," argues Insurance Commissioner Roger Sevigny.

Tax Lies for the Gullible.  One of the key arguments of those who oppose what they call "tax cuts for the rich" is that the Reagan administration tax cuts led to huge federal government decits, contrary to "supply side economics" which said that lower tax rates would lead to higher tax revenues.  This reduces the whole issue to a question about facts — and the hard facts are available in many places, including a local public library or on the internet.  The hardest of these hard facts is that the revenues collected from federal income taxes during every year of the Reagan administration were higher than the revenues collected from federal income taxes during any year of any previous administration.

Schumer: Money for Border Wall Could Be Used to 'Give Just About Every American Broadband'.  "The money is better used elsewhere," Schumer said.  "If the wall is $50 billion dollars, you could use that money to give just about every American broadband."

The Editor says...
Maybe the Senator's assertion (about what can be purchased with $50 billion dollars) is true, but generally [#1] just because you have money on hand, that doesn't mean it has to be spent, and [#2] one prioritizes budget items and spends money on the things one needs the most.  The border wall is a matter of national defense which is needed a lot more than "broadband" service for every American.  (Or a lot of other things — like close-up pictures of other planets.)  Illegal aliens can be deterred with low-tech physical obstacles that are only a little more daunting than the Rio Grande.  Razor wire, for example.  And [#3] broadband service is really overrated:  Most Americans watch too much television already.

The Obamacare Financing Flimflam.  Now we know why the Obama administration unilaterally changed rules on Fannie Mae funds in 2012.  They basically screwed private-sector bondholders and shareholders to create a slush fund for left-wing groups allied with the administration.  These funds do not go through Congress.  They are treated as off-balance sheet entities, where the amount that comes to the government is treated as a net reduction in expenses instead of an increase in revenue.  In other words, it allows Congress and the president to pretend they are controlling spending.

Obama's biggest whoppers.  [For example,] "We signed into law the biggest middle-class tax cut in history."  This 2011 claim was not based on a dollar figure but on dubious math — that supposedly 95 percent of working families received some kind of tax cut under the Making Work Pay provision in Obama's stimulus bill.  John F. Kennedy actually wins the prize for biggest tax cut, at least in the last half-century.  By the same measure, the income tax provisions of George W. Bush tax cuts were more than twice as large as Obama's tax cut over the same three-year time span.

Before and After Obama: 10 Signs of a Diminished America.  The national debt was $10.6 trillion when Obama took office, while complaining that George W. Bush's deficits were not only too high, they were downright unpatriotic. [...] Obama would go on to add more debt than Bush in just three years of his spendthrift presidency.  He leaves office with a national debt of $19.7 trillion, coming just shy of doubling the debt all by himself, and all we got for it was a mediocre economy, dwindling workforce, and sky-high welfare dependency.

Pelosi blames Bush for $9 trillion in debt added under Obama.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi blamed former President George W. Bush and the Republicans on Friday [1/13/2017] for the more than $9 trillion that has been added to the national debt under President Obama's watch.  Pelosi argued that under Obama, the annual budget deficit, which contributes to the national debt, has been reduced dramatically, and said that without Obama's work, the national debt would be even higher.  She also mostly blamed Bush for not paying for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Reaction to the article above:
Nancy Pelosi and the Big Lie.  Every word Nancy Pelosi utters is a lie, all conjunctions and articles included.  President Bush submitted a budget for fiscal year 2009, which included a projected deficit of a way-too-high $407.4 billion.  However, the Congress, then under control of the Democrats, with Mrs Pelosi serving as the Speaker of the House, declined to pass President Bush's budget.  Rather, after the end of FY 2008 on September 30, 2008, Congress funded the federal government through the mechanisms of continuing resolutions, rather than normal budgeting and appropriations.

Obama Pats Himself On The Back: 'Every Country On Earth Sees America As Stronger' Than Before I Took Office.  Obama opened the press conference by touting his economic and policy achievements before heaping praise on his own shoulders.  "Almost every country on Earth sees America as stronger and more respected today than they did eight years ago."  "In other words, by so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than when we started," he continued.

The Editor says...
These statements are coming from a man who operated the government without a budget for eight years and more than doubled the national debt.

Is Obama Opening Up the Federal Spending Floodgates to Get Hillary Elected?  During the last year of his reign of error, our beloved Nobel Peace Prize winner, Obama ran out of government accounting gimmicks to falsely proclaim Federal deficits have been falling.  His legacy of debt accumulation will go down in history as the last dying gasps of a crumbling empire built upon Keynesian delusions, political corruption, and a Deep State establishment hellbent upon retaining power at the cost of global war and financial collapse.  The entirely fabricated government propaganda data point known as the Federal deficit skyrocketed by 34% in fiscal 2016 (Federal year is Oct. 1 to Sept. 30).  The reported deficit in FY15 was a mere $438 billion.  Obama and his brain dead minions had boasted about such a small deficit.  The country has been in existence for 227 years and Obama had the balls to boast about "achieving" the 8th highest deficit in our history.  Just for some context, the savior also led the country to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th highest deficits in the country's history.  Bumbling Bush achieved the 7th highest in the glorious year of 2008.

In 6 Months Since Budget Deal:  Debt Up More Than $1 Trillion.  In the six months that have passed since then-retiring House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cut a budget deal with President Barack Obama that suspended the legal limit on the federal debt until March 15, 2017, the federal debt has increased by more than $1 trillion.  The Senate passed "The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015" with a vote held in the early morning hours of Friday, Oct. 30.  Obama signed it on Monday, Nov. 2.

Debunking VAT Myths.  The value-added tax is a very dangerous levy for the simple reason that giving a big new source of revenue to Washington almost certainly would result in a larger burden of government spending.  That's certainly what happened in Europe, and there's even more reason to think it would happen in America because we have a looming, baked-in-the-cake entitlement crisis and many politicians don't want to reform programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare.  They would much rather find additional tax revenues to enable this expansion of the welfare state.  And their target is the middle class, which is why they very much want a VAT.  The most frustrating part of this debate is that there are some normally rational people who are sympathetic to the VAT because they focus on theoretical issues and somehow convince themselves that this new levy would be good for the private sector.

National Debt Will Soon Eclipse GDP, Says Comptroller General.  U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, the man responsible for assessing the federal government's fiscal condition, told a Senate panel Wednesday [4/6/2016] that the government will soon owe more than the entire economy produces.  During a Senate Budget Committee hearing on the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) audit of the federal government's fiscal year 2015 financial statements, Dodaro said that despite a modest reduction in the annual budget deficit, the national debt remains a serious and growing problem.

Auditor: Government Will Owe More Money Than Entire Economy Produces.  An auditor for the Government Accountability Office told lawmakers Wednesday [4/6/2016] that in the next few years the federal government will owe more than our entire economy produces.  Gene Dodaro, the comptroller general for the Government Accountability Office, testified at the Senate Budget Committee to provide the results of its audit on the government's financial books.  "We're very heavily leveraged in debt," Dodaro said.  "The historical average post-World War II of how much debt we held as a percent of gross domestic product was 43 percent on average; right now we're at 74 percent."  Dodaro says that under current law, debt held by the public will hit a historic high.

Senate Dem: National debt is not 'a threat to our country'.  Senate Democrats on Wednesday couldn't agree that federal debt is a national security problem, in a hearing aimed at assessing the long-term strategic implications of the government's $19 trillion debt.  "A realistic discussion about it, and accepting expert opinion that this debt that we have is not actually right now a threat to our country, is I think a more realistic and honorable way of talking to the American people about it," Sen.  Ed Markey, D-Mass., said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday [4/6/2016].

Top 10 Lies in Obama's State of the Union.  [#1]  "[W]e've done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters."  This is pure fiction.  Obama has doubled the national debt, and it's not because he cut the deficit.  Rather, he spent staggering amounts of money in his first months in office — which he assigns, dishonestly, to the previous fiscal year, under George W. Bush.  He "cut" (i.e. spent more gradually) from that spending, but only under protest, after Republicans took the House in 2010.  It is true that Obama's 2015 budget deficit was about 25% of his 2010 deficit.  But he referred to "deficits," plural.  Until last year, all of Obama's deficits were worse than all of Bush's deficits except for the last two.

WH: 'We Will Close Gitmo Because It is Bad for Our National Security and Because It's Too Costly'.  Congress has expressly forbidden President Obama from transferring prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to the United States, but White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough shrugged it off on Sunday [1/10/2016].  "What the president just said is, he's going to work with Congress, present them a plan to close (the prison), and then he'll make some final determinations," McDonough told Fox News Sunday [1/10/2016].

The Editor says...
Guantanamo costs about half as much as Obama's annual Hawaii vacation.

Criminal Intent: Déjà vu all over again.  Janet Yellen increased interest rates for the first time in nine years this week.  She isn't raising them because the economy is strengthening.  The economy just happens to be weakening rapidly, as global recession takes hold.  The stock market is 3% lower than it was in December 2014, and has basically done nothing since the end of QE3.  Wall Street is throwing a hissy fit to try and stop Janet from boosting rates by an inconsequential .25%.  Janet would prefer not to raise rates, but the credibility and reputation of her bubble blowing machine is at stake.  The Fed has enriched their Wall Street benefactors over the last six years, while destroying the real economy and the middle class.

Hillary Clinton panders to middle-class voters with unrealistic tax promises.  If there is a social or economic need, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has a tax credit to match.  She's proposed one for businesses that institute profit-sharing plans (cost:  $20 billion over 10 years); another for hiring disabled veterans; and, as of last week, a tax credit worth up to $1,200 to help families defray the cost of caring for their elderly members at home (a $10 billion, 10-year item).  Coming soon:  changes to Social Security to benefit workers who take time off to care for the elderly.  When it comes to paying for these "targeted" benefits, plus her other promises such as universal preschool, however, the former secretary of state has a clear principle:  none of the 97 percent of U.S. households that earn $250,000 or less per year will be asked to contribute higher taxes.

Bias alert!
The writer at the Washington Post seems to think that taxes are contributions, which the government asks for, as opposed to demanding they be paid under threat of imprisonment.

Lifting Debt Ceiling A Signal For Spending Spree To Begin.  $18,532,338,091,711.00: That was the national debt late Thursday [11/5/2015].  The feds couldn't wait to start bingeing once Congress lifted the debt ceiling and canceled spending caps.  A week earlier, the debt stood at roughly $18.1 trillion.  What happened?  Economist David Malpass of Encima Global was the first to alert us to the sudden surge in borrowing.  On Tuesday [11/3/2015], the national debt skyrocketed by $339.1 billion.  In one day!  It's the most borrowing in one day for all of American history, according to USA Today.

"US Debt Is Three Times More Than You Think" Warns Former Chief U.S. Accountant.  In a shocking admission for most of mainstream America, the former U.S. comptroller general says the real U.S. debt is closer to about $65 trillion than the oft-cited figure of $18 trillion, thanks to unfunded liabilities which simply cannot be ignored.  As The Hill reports, unless economic growth accelerates, he warns, "you're not going to be able to provide the kind of social safety net that we need in this country," adding unequivocially that Americans have "lost touch with reality" when it comes to spending.

The Most Devious Liars in the Room.  A critical thinking person might wonder why the National Debt went up by 26% more than the deficit officially reported by our trustworthy leaders.  This is where the hocus pocus of government accounting enters the picture.  You just don't count things that would make the deficit bigger.  You pretend the SSI and SSDI entitlement programs aren't running deficits.  You pretend you are being paid back by Fannie and Freddie, when it is just meaningless accounting entries.  And this doesn't even scratch the surface of the true annual deficits.

Debt Ceiling Lifted, and the Same Day, Debt Jumps $339B.  The U.S. national debt jumped $339 billion on Monday [11/2/2015], the same day President Obama signed into law legislation suspending the debt ceiling.  That legislation allowed the government to borrow as much as it wants above the $18.1 trillion debt ceiling that had been in place.

Podcast: Liberal Lies About Taxes.  The core topic of today's show is the troubling misinformation campaign by the media and the far-left on the topic of tax rates.  They simply refuse to tell the truth about the results of past U.S. income tax rate cuts because the data runs counter to their class-warfare narrative.  [Audio clip]

The Selfish' 'Charity' of Liberals.  Liberals often attack conservatives for not being charitable and caring.  But studies show that conservatives give more of their own money to charities and that people who go to church give more than people who don't.  By the traditional definition, it's liberals who are lacking in charity.  The disconnect can be explained by this quote from a liberal on FaceBook:  ["]There is precious little difference between me giving charity directly, and the government taxing me a little more and using that.["]  Apparently liberals don't realize that increasing tax rates impact everyone, not just them.

Income Inequality: Totally Irrelevant In A Country Like America.  The fundamental issue behind income inequality could be boiled down to a single question:  Are poor Americans better or worse off because Bill Gates ($79 billion net worth), Oprah Winfrey ($3 billion net worth), Michael Jordan ($1 billion net worth) and Mark Zuckerberg ($40 billion net worth) are living in the United States?

The Fed Just "Discovered" Another $2.7 Trillion In Debt.  The people of the United States, misled by its politicians, and plundered by its financial institutions, are swimming in so much debt that no one will probably ever grasp the truly staggering amount — if indeed it can ever be fully calculated.  Forget paying it all back; the Federal Reserve isn't even apparently aware of how deep the crisis goes.  Officially, the U.S. was already $59 trillion in debt in 2015, but now the number is significantly higher.  When the Fed is changed its method of tracking and reporting debt numbers, and replaced a single Credit Market Instruments chart with two separate charts for "debt securities" and "loans," it suddenly reported an additional $2.7 trillion.

The Nation's Budget Outlook Is Worse Than You Think.  The CBO's latest "Budget and Economic Outlook Report" projects that after dropping this year and next, annual deficits will start to climb and will top $1 trillion in 2025.  That's a slight improvement over the forecast that the budget office made in March.  But it still means that the country is on an unsustainable path.  The truth is that given the vast array of revenue, spending and economic variables, nobody can reliably predict what will happen that far out — a fact that the CBO itself admitted when it started making 10-year budget forecasts in the mid-1990s.  The problem is that these 10-year forecasts have been consistently wrong in one direction — they've been way too optimistic.

150 Days: Treasury Says Debt Has Been Frozen at $18,112,975,000,000.  The portion of the federal debt that is subject to a legal limit set by Congress closed Monday, August 10, at $18,112,975,000,000, according to the latest Daily Treasury Statement, which was published at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday [8/11/2015].  That, according to the Treasury's statements, makes 150 straight days the debt subject to the limit has been frozen at $18,112,975,000,000.  $18,112,975,000,000 is about $25 million below the current legal debt limit of $18,113,000,080,959.35.

The Editor says...
As long as you're cooking the books, why not just freeze the national debt at a thousand dollars?

Obama: 'Real' IRS Scandal Is That It's 'Poorly Funded'.  During an interview on the Daily Show, President Obama insisted that the IRS scandal isn't real.  He blames Republicans for not providing enough money to the federal agency to allow it to do its job.  Obama explained that accusations that they were specifically targeting conservative organizations was false and that IRS employees were simply implementing laws passed by Congress "poorly and stupidly."

'Just Asking'.  One of the ways of fighting poverty, [President Obama] proposed, was to "ask from society's lottery winners" that they make a "modest investment" in government programs to help the poor.  Since free speech is guaranteed to everyone by the First Amendment to the Constitution, there is nothing to prevent anybody from asking anything from anybody else.  But the federal government does not just "ask" for money.  It takes the money it wants in taxes, usually before the people who have earned it see their paychecks.  Despite pious rhetoric on the left about "asking" the more fortunate for more money, the government does not "ask" anything.  It seizes what it wants by force.  If you don't pay up, it can take not only your paycheck, it can seize your bank account, put a lien on your home and/or put you in federal prison.  So please don't insult our intelligence by talking piously about "asking."

Four Pinocchios:
Clinton's claim that illegal immigrants pay more in taxes than some corporations.  "In New York, which I know a little bit about because I represented it for eight years and I live there now, our undocumented workers in New York pay more in taxes than some of the biggest corporations in New York." — Hillary Clinton, roundtable in North Las Vegas, May 5, 2015.

Obama: I'm not a 'tax-and-spend' liberal.  President Obama expressed amazement Wednesday [4/15/2015] that his opponents portray him as a tax-and-spend liberal, and he also gave a plug for the fiscal responsibility of the Clinton administration.  "If you listen to some of my political critics, they always want to paint me or the Democratic Party as this tax-and-spend, you know, irresponsible," Mr. Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina.  "Since I came into office, the federal deficit's come down by two-thirds."

Obama Decries Austerity As Federal Spending Climbs 8.3%.  When President Obama announced his budget plan, he said it was time to end the "mindless austerity" in Washington.  While he was saying this, federal spending was shooting up 8.3%. [...] What's more, Treasury expects outlays for the entire year to run close to $3.9 trillion, which is higher than either the CBO or the White House forecasts.  If Treasury is right, that will mean a 10% increase in federal spending without anyone lifting a finger.  This, mind you, comes at a time when inflation is running at about 1%.

One Chart Is All It Takes: The Ludicrous Claims of Obama as a "Deficit-Cutter".  Oh, and did I mention the chart itself comes from the Obama Federal Reserve?

Obama Claim of $1.8 Trillion Deficit Cuts Open to Question.  President Barack Obama's budget is relying on a series of familiar accounting tricks to show $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction over a decade, an amount that would shrink by almost half if they were excluded.

White House Unaware That 6 Million Americans Will Pay Obamacare Tax This Year.  White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest described reports that millions of Americans would be getting tax bill because of Obamacare as "inaccurate" just days after the Treasury Department estimated that 6 million Americans will pay about $2 billion in individual mandate taxes this year.  "I don't think it is accurate to suggest that millions of people are going to get a tax bill as a result of this," Earnest said in response to a question Tuesday [2/3/2015] about the millions of Americans who will pay a tax penalty for not having health insurance in 2014.

Independent analysis finds Obama's 'middle-class' tax cuts won't help three-quarters of the middle class or two-thirds of the poor.  President Barack Obama calls his tax and spending plan 'middle-class economics,' but most middle-income families would see little change in their tax bills.

Obama Complains About 'Mindless Austerity' While Bankrupting The Country.  President Obama says it's time to end the "mindless austerity" and start spending again.  This from the man who's alone added $6.7 trillion to the nation's debt.  'I want to work with Congress," Obama said in releasing his fiscal 2016 budget, "to replace mindless austerity with smart investments."  Mindless austerity?

Obama: 'We can afford' $74B spending increase.  In his weekly address, Mr. Obama made the case that the federal government has the money to invest in infrastructure, education and other priorities because of shrinking deficits, though he also is calling for tax hikes on the wealthy to fund his desired $74 billion increase in spending.  His budget also would undo the automatic cuts known as sequestration, paving the way for even higher spending down the road.

Obama says his $4 trillion budget is 'smarter' than sequestration.  President Obama trumpeted his proposed federal budget for next fiscal year on Monday, calling his combination of tax hikes and spending increases a "smarter" blueprint for boosting the middle class.  "It helps working families' paychecks go further," Obama said of his $4 trillion budget.  "It gives Americans of every age a chance to succeed."  Obama's budget released Monday [2/2/2015] offered few concessions to a Republican-controlled Congress, proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases to pay for his progressive economic proposals.

Obama: My budget is a 'blueprint for success'.  President Obama Thursday [1/29/2015] touted the looming release of his federal budget, urging Republicans to support a slate of tax increases to pay for his economic blueprint for the middle class.  "We have to choose what we want that future to look like," Obama said in an op-ed published by the Huffington Post. [...] The president is calling for a 7 percent spending hike in fiscal 2016, the elimination of across-the-board budget cuts, the so-called sequester, and an increase of $320 billion in taxes over the next decade.

Tax hikes won't improve the state of our union.  President Barack Obama revisited a number of familiar — and failed — themes in his State of the Union address.  Once again, the president is asking for higher taxes on the wealthy and more government entitlement programs for the poor and middle class. [...] What is notable is that despite six years of sluggish economic growth and repudiation of his economic policies in last fall's elections, the president is sticking to his class warfare guns, choosing to grow government rather than the economy.

New IRS Data Expose Dems' Phony Tax-the-Rich Mantra.  Democrats unveiled a plan Monday that — surprise — would boost taxes on the rich.  But new IRS data show these soak-the-rich campaigns are based on total falsehoods.

New CBO Report Explodes Tax Fairness Myths.  The CBO looks at the distribution of household income and federal taxes up through 2011, the last year for which it has data.  It found, for example, that:  While the top 1% of households accounted for 15% of all income, they paid 35% of all federal income taxes.  The bottom 20% accounted for 5.3% of income, but they got more in refundable tax credits, on average, than they paid in income taxes.  Even when you include payroll and other federal taxes, the bottom 20% carried just 0.6% of the total tax burden.

Fundraising, Or Hate Speech?  [R]ecall 2012 — not exactly ancient history — when Harry Reid repeatedly claimed that Mitt Romney had gone for a decade without paying any taxes.  And was, therefore, presumably a felon, since no one says that Romney has gone without income.  This was not just a lie, but an insane lie.  The idea that a person can earn millions of dollars and just choose not to pay taxes on his income — as though the tax system were entirely optional, and we get to select our own tax bracket — is absurd.  It is, nevertheless, commonly implied when Democrats talk about taxes.

50 Things Barack Obama Has Done Wrong:  [#10]  When he was running for office in 2008, Obama claimed that, "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.  Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."  He lied.

The Big-Spending Obamas.  Does President Barack Obama know how much he is spending?  Critics of the president asked that question after he asserted, "Since I've been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years."  (This figure comes from an online article that has been widely debunked because, among other sleights of hand, it interprets modest rates of increase in annual spending as a reduction in the spending, even though the total actual spending under Obama's watch has been gargantuan.)

More Fuel Efficient Cars Causing Highway Trust Fund to Go Broke.  The problem, you see, is that the Highway Trust Fund is "going broke," by the Beltway's curious definition of the phrase.  It is sort of the way that after a round of painful "cuts," spending somehow still goes up.  The Highway Trust Fund takes in more than 18 cents on every gallon of gasoline sold in this country, so there is plenty of revenue.  Just not enough to meet Washington's needs and desires.  People are driving more fuel efficient cars and with gas already around $4 a gallon, not taking the trips they might otherwise take.  So instead of having the $50 billion that Congress budgeted, the trust fund is looking at $34 billion.

The Editor says...
Fuel efficient cars are not the problem.  The problem, as you can read below, is that the government spends money from the Highway Trust Fund on projects that have nothing to do with highways.

Federal Highway Trust Fund Pays for Bike Paths in Wisconsin.  A looming shortfall in the federal highway trust fund threatens to dramatically cut the amount of money states get from the federal government for road and highway maintenance.  But even as some policymakers examine the possibility of raising taxes to boost revenues, a review of federally-funded transportation projects in Wisconsin finds that federal money has been spent on things like bicycle paths, archeological research, and beautification projects, among other things.

Why is the HTF out of money?  The current law governing the federal highway and transit programs, set in effect by the last highway bill, is called MAP-21: Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century.  MAP-21 authorizes annual spending well above the revenue the HTF will collect and funds a host of parochial projects that have no business being handled at the federal level.  This practice has allowed HTF expenditures to far eclipse the amount of revenue collected from fuel taxes.

Highway Trust Fund Nearly Out of Money.  Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, raised similar concerns in testimony in May to the Senate Finance Committee.  "There is no reason to raise the federal gas tax," Edwards said.  "You send the money to Washington, a lot of it gets lost in paper work and bureaucracy and pork-barrel politics."  In his testimony, Edwards noted, since the 1970s, "fuel taxes have been siphoned off for non-highway purposes, particularly with the creation of the transit program in 1982.  About one-quarter of HTF spending today is for non-highway purposes."

Obama's Plan: Taxes, Spending And Debt.  When Obama released his budget this March, he said it included "smart spending cuts" and closed "tax loopholes" that benefit only "the wealthiest Americans."  Obama added that his budget would put "our debt on a downward path as a share of our total economy, which independent experts have set as a critical target for fiscal responsibility."  As with just about everything Obama says, none of these claims turns out be true.  When the Congressional Budget Office scrubbed Obama's budget, it didn't find a balanced or responsible plan at all.

Obama's Economy-Killing Tax-Hike Frenzy Knows No End.  In his first campaign, President Obama pledged to cut taxes for all but the very rich.  Now that another tax day has come and gone, it should be very clear that his pledge was just another in a long line of falsehoods. [...] A new report from Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a group that advocates tax cuts to restore economic growth, says that President Obama has so far pushed for 442 tax hikes — many of them aimed squarely at the struggling middle class whom Obama has vowed repeatedly to protect.  If Obama were to get his way, he'd be the most prolific tax hiker in history.

Obama casts GOP's balanced-budget plan as 'massive tax cuts' for millionaires.  President Obama on Saturday continued his election-year assault on the House GOP's latest budget proposal, telling Americans the plan would "raise taxes on middle-class families with kids" and cut crucial programs while giving more handouts to the rich.  In his weekly address, Mr. Obama made his case — without explicitly saying so — why voters should elect more Democrats in this November's midterm elections and contrasted the GOP plan with his party's priorities.

Drudge Exposes Another ObamaCare Lie, Pays 'Liberty Tax'.  Despite White House claims no one has to pay ObamaCare's individual mandate tax until next year, a Web heavyweight points out that self-employed individuals file their estimated taxes this year for 2014.  In what could be the tweet heard around the world, Internet icon Matt Drudge tweeted at 11:09 a.m. Friday:  "Just paid the ObamaCare penalty for not 'getting covered' ... I'M CALLING IT A LIBERTY TAX!"  A mere 22 minutes later, White House spokesman Jesse Lee tweeted:  "Flat lie, no fee for previous year."  Lee's tweet shows just how little the White House knows about business, particularly small business, [...]

The Profound Arrogance and Stupidity of Liberals in Charge.  The recent Twitter kerfuffle between Matt Drudge and the Obama/media/academic complex over the ObamaCare tax demonstrates in plain view and without question something many of us have known for years:  while the organized left insist that they are the only ones smart enough to run the world, they remain astonishingly ignorant of how it works. [...] In none of these attacks on Drudge did it occur to these media maestros how self-employed people are impacted by the tax ramifications of ObamaCare.

It's Not an Obamacare Tax: It's an "Individual Shared Responsibility Payment".  Here's your Orwellian Phrase for the Week:  Individual shared responsibility payment.  Yeah... Go ahead and try to wrap your brain around that amalgamation of contradictory concepts.  The phrase is not gleamed from some glossy DNC spin-office, or a Harvard professor's latest psychobabble posing as an academic paper.  Apparently the phrase is the IRS's fancy (new) term for the Obamacare Mandate tax that individuals will have to pay if they fail to get health insurance this year.

White House report says $763 billion stimulus was free.  President Obama's $763 billion stimulus was basically free, according to a White House report that said the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was so successful that it paid for itself.

IRS Targeting: Round Two.  President Obama keeps claiming that he had no knowledge of the Internal Revenue Service's abusive muzzling of conservative groups.  That line is hard to swallow given that his Treasury and IRS are back at it — this time in broad daylight.  In the media blackout of Thanksgiving week, the Treasury Department dumped a new proposal to govern the political activity of 501(c)(4) groups.  The administration claims this rule is needed to clarify confusing tax laws.  Hardly.  The rule is the IRS's new targeting program — only this time systematic, more effective, and with the force of law.

How Much Redistribution Is Enough?  To deflect attention from ObamaCare's failures, the president this month trotted out his income inequality chestnut.  "A dangerous and growing inequality," he intoned, "has jeopardized middle-class America's basic bargain."  He argued, "as a trickle-down ideology became more prominent, taxes were slashed for the wealthiest, while investments in things that make us all richer, like schools and infrastructure, were allowed to wither."  Apparently, nobody bothered to brief the president before he delivered this speech.  Fact is, federal transportation spending has climbed 39% in real terms since 1980, and spending on education has more than doubled.  And while Obama claims taxes were "slashed for the wealthiest," the average tax rate among the top 1% was higher in 2010 than in the early 1980s.

Obamacare laid bare.  [Scroll down]  Obamacare is the largest transfer of wealth in recent American history.  But you can't say that openly lest you lose elections.  So you do it by subterfuge:  hidden taxes, penalties, mandates and coverage requirements that yield a surplus of overpayments.  So that your president can promise to cover 30 million uninsured without costing the government a dime.  Which from the beginning was the biggest falsehood of them all.  And yet the free lunch is the essence of modern liberalism.  Free mammograms, free preventative care, free contraceptives for Sandra Fluke.  Come and get it.

Banging the Drum for Default.  Actually, default is not paying the interest/principle on what one has borrowed.  Current federal revenue is way more than enough to easily pay what we owe on federal notes, bills, and bonds.  If the feds do indeed have enough revenue pouring in to meet their obligations, then actual default would be an act of volition, a decision by the president.  The president would have to decide to squander the full faith and credit of the nation.  Such an action would be an impeachable offense.  The president tells us that the deficit has been cut in half.  He's right, but that's only because it's come down from astronomical levels.

Obama: Not Allowing Gov't to Borrow More 'Would Amount to a New Tax'.  Obama said once the debt ceiling is raised and the shutdown is over, "there's a lot we can accomplish together."  He called for more job creation at a time when Obamacare is prompting some employers to cut jobs or move workers to part-time.  And he called for additional deficit reduction in a "smarter, balanced way," which is code for tax hikes.

Obama: 'Raising the Debt Ceiling ...Does Not Increase Our Debt,' Though It Has 'Over 100 Times'.  Raising the debt ceiling doesn't increase the nation's debt, Pres. Obama declared in a speech today [9/18/2013].  In a speech at the Business Roundtable headquarters in Washington, D.C., Obama dismissed concerns about raising the debt ceiling by noting that it'd been done so many times in the past.

The Editor says...
This is the kind of double-talking flim-flam that one would expect to hear from a used car salesman out in the sticks — not from someone holding a respectable public office.

New Obamacare rule uses terms 'shared responsibility payment' and 'penalty' instead of 'tax'.  The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) final rule on Obamacare's individual mandate, released this week, uses the term "Shared Responsibility Payment" more than 50 times to describe the mandate's non-compliance penalty, which the Supreme Court in 2012 defined as a tax.  The IRS also used the term "shared responsibility penalty" in the rule, which does not identify the individual mandate as a tax.

Bam's phone-y tax.  Take note of the Obama administration's latest "for the children" initiative:  expanding high-speed Internet for schools across the country. [...] Team Obama recognizes there's little appetite in Congress for another program.  So it's not even going to try for legislation.  Instead the plan is to stick AT&T with the bill.  And Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc. [...] To the extent Americans notice the new fee, they are likely to direct their anger at the private carriers rather than the politicians.

Reporters Laugh When Obama's Spokesman Denies Another 'End Run' Around Congress.  The White House press corps laughed when President Obama's spokesman on Wednesday [8/14/2013] said the president, in directing the Federal Communications Commission to raise cell phone taxes to pay for broadband Internet access in schools, would not be going around Congress.

Democrats' Lust For Spending Continues.  All the talk of massive deficits and the need to cut spending apparently hasn't sunk in on Capitol Hill, at least not among Democratic lawmakers who continue to push massive amounts of new spending.

The Spending Cuts that Never Were.  Do Washington politicians think we are stupid?  There are no cuts in Federal spending.  Yet big-government politicians and advocates continually beat the drum about (nonexistent) budget cuts.  Are big-spenders playing a "long con?" [...] President Barack Obama tried to blackmail Americans into accepting tax increases by holding air travel hostage.  Let's call Obama's tactic what it is:  extortion.  Obama tried to convince Americans and Congress that unless Congress surrendered to Obama's agenda for higher taxes and higher debt limits, businessmen and vacation travelers would face long delays at airports.

Tax Breaks Don't Unfairly Benefit The Wealthy.  A new Congressional Budget Office report shows that the rich get most of the benefit from various deductions and credits in the tax code, music to the ears of the soak-the-rich crowd.  But since the wealthy pay nearly all the nation's income taxes, this is hardly a sign of unfairness.  According to the CBO report, the government "spends" about $900 billion through deductions, exclusions, special tax rates and tax credits, with more than half going to the wealthiest 20% of households, while just 8% goes to the bottom fifth.  Democrats, who ordered the report, celebrated the news, since it appears to provide ammunition for their campaign to impose another tax hike on the rich in the name of fairness.

The Bully Pulpit.  We have truly entered the world of "Alice in Wonderland" when the CEO of a company that pays $16 million a day in taxes is hauled up before a congressional subcommittee and denounced on nationwide television for not paying more.  Apple CEO Tim Cook was denounced for contributing to "a worrisome federal deficit," according to Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) — one of the big-spending liberals in Congress who has had a lot more to do with creating that deficit than any private citizen has.

The Apple Tax Diversion.  You almost have to admire Carl Levin's timing.  Amid a furor over politicized IRS tax enforcement, the Michigan Democrat on Tuesday tried to change the subject to a hardy Washington perennial — corporate tax loopholes.  Too bad his designated business pinata, Apple, demonstrates instead the insanity of the tax code that Mr. Levin has done so much to write.

Outgoing IRS Chief: Taxes [are] Voluntary.  On Friday, former acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee, said that America's tax system is "voluntary."  During the hearing, Rep. Devin Nunes (D-CA) said in passing that the U.S. tax code is a "voluntary system."  Miller simply responded, "Agreed."  This line has been used before by none other than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

There Was No Surge in IRS Tax-Exempt Applications in 2010.  Fewer groups sought recognition as 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations that year than in 2009, according to the Treasury Department.

CBO: Obama Vastly Exaggerated Deficit Cuts In Budget.  When Obama put out his budget in mid-April he said that it "will reduce our deficits by nearly another $2 trillion," and "does so in a balanced and responsible way, a way that most Americans prefer."  But the CBO report finds that Obama's budget will cut 10-year deficits by just $1.1 trillion, with annual deficits starting to rise again after 2017.  And far from being balanced, the CBO found that his plan's tax hikes would outweigh spending cuts by nearly 6 to 1.

The 'Independent' Revenue Service.  One notable aspect of the Internal Revenue Service scandal is President Obama's strange view of accountability within the executive branch.  In his Monday [5/13/2013] remarks addressing the targeting of conservative groups for tax-exempt scrutiny, Mr. Obama declared that the IRS is "an independent agency." [...] The IRS is many things, but "independent" isn't one of them.  It is formally part of the Treasury Department and is headed by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed by the President.  The Commissioner is accountable to the President reporting through the Treasury Secretary.

More about the use of the IRS as a weapon.

Obama: $1 trillion in Obamacare spending is historic 'tax cut'.  As part of a Mothers' Day weekend defense of his signature legislative accomplishment, President Obama claimed that the law represented the "largest health care tax cut for working families and small businesses in our history."  His argument was a Hail-Mary effort to redesignate subsidies for individuals to purchase health insurance on government-run exchanges as a "tax cut."  But according to the Congressional Budget Office, these subsidies actually qualify as more than $1 trillion in "Exchange Subsidies and Related Spending."

Obama Budget Shows Middle-Class Tax Pledge Was Fraud.  A new study shows President Obama's budget would significantly boost taxes on the middle class.  Funny, we seem to recall him promising voters that only the rich would pay for his grandiose spending plans.

The Decline of Obama.  In the 2014 budget he announced last week, Obama proposed a more accurate way of calculating the inflation rate for annual cost-of-living increases in Social Security.  It's a technical change in pursuit of honesty and good government.  And if adopted, it would cause benefits to grow more slowly, though almost imperceptibly so. [...] Then came the catch.  The president's price for adopting this gentle reform was hundreds of billions in new tax increases.  It was a price Republicans were certain to reject, as Obama surely knew.

Senate Democrats Want Unnecessary $1.5 Trillion Tax Increase.  It has been nearly four years since the last time the Senate passed a budget.  In that time, it hasn't as much as proposed a budget.  That at long last changed yesterday when Senate Budget chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) released a budget plan for next year.  Now that the Democrats in control of the Senate have at least proposed a budget, passing it through the senior chamber will be the next challenge.  Doing so will be no small order.  It could be difficult because, to no one's surprise, Murray's budget includes a massive tax increase.  She wants to raise taxes by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.  She would do so by "closing loopholes."

Obama: Our Out-of-Control Debt Is 'Sustainable' for the Next Decade.  In an interview with former Bill Clinton apparatchik George Stephanopoulos aired on ABC Wednesday morning [3/13/2013], President Barack Obama shared his beliefs about where the nation stands financially.  The takeaway quotes from that sit-down concern Obama's unserious take on the size and grave nature of the federal government's annual deficits, which have exceeded $1 trillion during each of the past four fiscal years, and the national debt, which, at $16.71 trillion as of Tuesday, has increased by over $6 trillion since he took office less than 50 months ago.

Pelosi: 'Tax Cuts Are Spending'.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) said today that the government must cut spending, and then explained that:  "Tax cuts are spending."  "Our whole budget is what $3.5 trillion," Pelosi said at a Capitol Hill press conference.  "So, when we talk about reducing spending, we certainly must, and we certainly have — $1.6 trillion in the previous Congress, $1.2 [sic] of it in the Budget Control Act.

Harry Reid Won 'Whopper Of The Week' For $2.5 Trillion Deficit Reduction Claim.  During a speech on the Senate floor last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid falsely claimed that the Democrats have reduced the budget deficit by $2.5 trillion.  It's such a gross lie it's almost laughable, and earned Reid the "Whopper of the Week" award from The Washington Guardian.

Harry Reid falsely claims the government has cut the deficit by $2.5 trillion.  It's politically fashionable now to say you've helped reduce the nation's debt.  And at nearly $1 trillion annually, there's a lot of debt to be reduced.  But during a speech this week on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Harry Reid claimed that over the past two years the government has reduced the deficit by $2.5 trillion — almost double the amount the deficit is right now.  "In the last two years we have reduced the deficit by $2.5 trillion," he said.

The Editor says...
This shows how comfortable the Democrats have become with the word trillion.

Rep. Conyers: 'The Debt Is Not Endangering Us a Bit ... We Don't Think There's a Problem'.  Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Thursday [3/14/2013] that the nation's current debt of $16.7 trillion is "not endangering" the country, adding that "some debt is not a bad idea" and that he and other congressional Democrats "don't think there's a problem."  Conyers and other liberal Democrats spoke at a Capitol Hill press conference about their initiative to compel Congress to cancel the across-the-board budget cuts (sequester) of $1.2 trillion over 10 years, which actually are reductions in the rate of increase in federal spending and amount to $44 billion for this year.

The Logic of Liberalism.  [Scroll down]  In sum, the liberal solution almost always involves more governmental intervention, more governmental interaction, and particularly more taxation.  Moreover, the liberal wants to be involved in everything; no issue is too unimportant for their watchful eyes. [...] One could justifiably argue that every proposed tax dollar increase is earmarked to be spent on three or more distinct venues.  This small, though paradoxically large, detail is never explained by anyone.

President Obama's Colossal Media Blunder.  Eschewing talks with Congress or any pretense of leadership, he is instead flying around the country burning $180,000 an hour on Air Force One laying out a parade of horribles that will descend upon us if the growth of federal spending were reduced by one iota.  Why is he doing this?  Because the mainstream media are lapping it up.  Poisoned meat coming to grocery shelves near you!  Air traffic grinds to a screeching halt!  Fires, murder, and mayhem in the streets as first responders are laid off!

Simpson-Bowles Exposes Obama's Phony Deficit Claims.  Liberals are howling about the latest Simpson-Bowles deficit plan because, they say, it's too right wing.  It's hardly that.  But the plan does expose how fatuous President Obama's claims about the deficit have been.

Obama uses cops and firemen as props:
Republicans Would Rather Protect the Wealthy Than First Responders, Obama Says.  Speaking at the White House on Tuesday [2/19/2013], President Obama said Republicans have a choice:  "Do you want to see a bunch of first responders lose their jobs because you want to protect some special interest tax loophole?"  He was surrounded by emergency responders as he spoke.

The Editor says...
I wasn't aware that firemen and cops received their paychecks from the federal government.

Without Serious Spending Cuts, the Conservative Base Will Walk Away.  What the Fiscal Cliff deal also illustrates is the utter mendacity of Democrats who for years droned on and on about the Bush tax rates as "tax cuts for the wealthy."  The vast majority of Democrats (49 in the Senate and 172 in the House) voted to make the evil Bush tax rates permanent.  The lapdog media, however, contends that the president won big in the Fiscal Cliff deal.

The Sequester Was Always About Raising Taxes.  President Obama's proposal to delay the $1 trillion sequester with a "balanced" package of spending cuts and tax increases should come as no surprise.  Since its initial conception back in August 2011 (it was Obama's idea), the sequester has always been viewed by Democrats as a mechanism with which to exact higher taxes from Republicans.

Democrats offer only one solution to any problem:  More spending and higher taxes.
Harkin: 'Is It a Spending Problem? No ... It's a Misallocation of Wealth'.  Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said on Thursday that U.S. government does not have a spending problem, but America suffers from "a misallocation of wealth."  "I look at it this way," Harkin said at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the Budget Control Act of 2011 (the law that includes the automatic spending cuts referred to as "sequestration").  "We're the richest nation in the history of the world.  That kind of begs the question doesn't it?  If we're so rich, why are we so broke?"

The Editor says...
There are so many lies and half-truths in Senator Harkin's outburst that it is difficult to catalog them all.  First, the United States is not necessarily the richest nation on earth, if the country's assets are weighed against its $16 trillion debt.  Second, the private individuals' wealth cannot be counted toward the "nation's" wealth.  Third, the top 1% of American taxpayers pay most of the taxes already.  Fourth, the reasons for this country's financial ailments are no mystery:  the government employs far too many bureaucrats, gives money to people who are too lazy to work, rewards promiscuous women for repeatedly giving birth to illegitimate children, and wastes billions of taxpayer dollars on extravagant pork barrel projects that benefit no one.

NY Times Notices Obama Tax Hikes Are Crushing Americans, Fails to Mention Obama.  This should be the first in a series.  Wait until these poor [people] start have to paying $20,000 a family to start for their free ObamaCare.  Still, curiously missing from this story is the name of the man responsible for this massive tax hike.

Remember Obama's tax hikes on the rich to pay debt? He's already spent every penny.  For weeks Obama traveled the country telling anyone who would listen and some who'd rather not that he's so absolutely positively determined to cut America's $16.4 trillion national debt that he did so much to grow.  And he was insistent on milking money from the rich to do just that.  Well, guess what?  That $50.4 billion spending bill for, among other things Hurricane Sandy aid, just ate up every single penny of that tax hike for this year, plus another $10 billion.

The bankruptcy of the Obama-Pelosi 'progressive' agenda.  Government spending is up over a trillion dollars, the federal deficit is spinning out of control and the country faces a credit downgrade by Moody's.  Former speaker Pelosi vilifies Republicans for not embracing the President's "balanced" approach, but he shows no interest in cutting spending and only passion for raising taxes on success.

Sandy relief bill eats up taxes on the rich.  Congress is poised to clear the final $50 billion chunk of emergency aid for Superstorm Sandy relief Monday [1/28/2013] — and in one vote, it will have used up all the new tax money President Obama won by raising rates on the wealthy in the "fiscal cliff" deal.

Now They Tell Us: Obama's Tax Promises Were Bogus.  Remember all those mainstream news reports before the election about how President Obama's expansive spending plans would require massive tax hikes on everyone, not just millionaires and billionaires?  Neither do we.  But somehow after the election, reporters are finally admitting that Obama's budget numbers simply don't add up and that new taxes on the middle class — including a European-style value added tax — are "inevitable."

Obama's Zero-Sum Game and the Coming Redistribution Bubble.  Obama has used redistribution rhetoric to spend so much money that a deficit of over 5 trillion dollars has been created in just his first term.  What does Obama expect will happen when this debt needs to be paid?  If all of the Obama debt is paid by only the rich, then the zero-sum solution would predict that less money is then available to redistribute to the poor.  If Obama expects all taxpayers, both rich and poor, to pay this debt, everyone will be left with less disposable income.  Through time, then, more income taxes will be used to service the debt payment, not to support income redistribution.  The president and his army of academic supporters refuse to address this issue.

The truth about Obama's tax fake out.  Further out, this agreement will do almost nothing to slow the dangerous erosion of our nation's financial strength; projected ten-year deficits of $7.9 trillion will be whittled down by $650 billion as the wealthy, by the way, pay not "a little more," but quite a lot more.  On top of a hike in rates from 35% to 39.6%, the wealthy will also see deductions phased out, will be paying new surtaxes on investment income to fund ObamaCare and Medicare as well as higher rates on investment income.  In addition, several states, including California, have passed new taxes on those in the top income brackets.

Let's Retire These Tired Straw Men in 2013.  The notion that somehow the budget is going to be balanced "on the backs of" a sacred-cow contingency (usually teachers, policemen, and firefighters) is quite difficult to respond to, simply because it doesn't make any sense coming from Obama and his party.  The Democrats extended the Bush tax cuts in December 2010 when they had total control of the federal government.  In January 2011, the Republicans gained control of only the House and couldn't push changes to tax policy.  Moreover, the Bush tax cuts helped the middle class and working class tremendously.

Obama: 'I Cut Spending by Over a Trillion Dollars in 2011'.  Appearing on NBCs "Meet the Press" on Sunday, President Barack Obama said that he cut spending by more than $1 trillion in 2011.  However, the White House Office of Management and Budget says that federal spending increased by $147 billion from fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2011.

The Fiscal Cliff Diversion.  [Scroll down]  Yet maybe the most telling informational deficiency is the shortage of reporting on the economic stimulative effects of previous income tax and capital gain tax reductions.  Reductions that then resulted in growing tax revenues and appreciable increases in prosperity for the American people.  In fact MSM stories have tried to debunk the realities of the Coolidge, JFK, Reagan, Clinton and Bush 43 tax reductions that kick started past sagging economies.  The media's reluctance to discuss tax cutting or the subsequent economic surges that followed their execution has largely removed these strategies from public debate.

The truth is that politicians are telling lies.  If a tax rise is modest enough to be politically acceptable to much of the electorate, it will not produce anything like enough to finance the universal American entitlement programmes, social security and Medicare, into a future with an ageing population.  There is no way that "taxing the rich" — that irresistibly glib Left-wing solution to everything — can make present and projected levels of government spending affordable.

With Election Over, Americans Find They Were Duped By Democrats And Obama.  Remember how Obama and his Democratic surrogates taunted Republicans repeatedly, saying they wanted to raise taxes only on "millionaires and billionaires" while cutting taxes for the middle class?  When Republicans tried to do just that, Obama said no thanks.

American Politics as a Confidence Game:  One of the most incredible and successful confidence games recently has centered on claims that the rich don't pay their "fair share," with the implication that the rest of us are shouldering a disproportionate burden of federal income tax payments.  Now, the target in this case consists of half the population that pays no federal income taxes at all, along with their "shills" — supporters — in the media and elsewhere.

Priebus: Obama's Fiscal Cliff Talks 'Dishonest Conversation'.  "It's ridiculous that we're having conversations about raising taxes in order to avoid a fiscal cliff, which is something that will, obviously, raise taxes on every American no matter what you make — and that the president is willing to do in order to try to raise taxes on people no matter what their income is," [RNC chairman Reince] Priebus tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview.

Boehner's Plan B Exposes Obama's Grade-A Tax Lie.  For years, President Obama said he just wanted to raise taxes a little bit on millionaires and billionaires.  So guess how he responded when House Speaker John Boehner proposed to do just that.

Obama Peddles Massive Myth About The Fiscal Cliff.  Practically every time he opens his mouth these days, President Obama warns that middle-class taxes will automatically go up on Jan. 1 if Congress fails to act on the fiscal cliff before year's end. [...] But Obama is creating a false sense of urgency — and needlessly scaring millions of middle-class families — simply to gain additional political leverage over Republicans.

Obama's Tax-the-Scapegoat Strategy Is Doomed to Fail.  In an interview with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly last year, President Obama claimed he "didn't raise taxes once."  O'Reilly didn't challenge the claim, and other reporters repeated it as fact.  But it was completely false.

White House's spending cuts? Critics call it creative Washington accounting.  "Over the past several years and as a part of the debt limit negotiations, they pretended to cut spending using the Washington definition, meaning that spending doesn't rise as fast as it was going to," Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute said.  The "Washington definition" Mitchell refers to is baseline budgeting, a technique put in place in 1974 as a part of post-Watergate reforms that allows spending increases every year by factoring in inflation and population increases.  Under baseline budgeting, legislators frequently use the term "cuts" to describe what is, in reality, a slowing of projected growth.

What happens if we confiscate 100% of all the income for people who make more than $200K?  The IRS received 3,924,490 tax returns showing an income over $200K.  These returns represent a total income of $1.964 trillion!  That's a huge amount of money.  But it's still not enough.  The federal government is spending about double that this year.  Confiscating 100% of the income from those who made more than $200K funds the federal government for only about six months.

Italics in original.

Tax-the-Rich Obama Fairy Tale Won't Magically Restore Public Services.  The Obama administration and its allies are so desperate to portray tax hikes on the rich as the solution to all our problems that they're trying to persuade the public that tax cuts for the rich caused all those problems.

Spender in Chief.  Obama's plan for a fiscal cliff compromise reflects his hostility to spending cuts.  Instead, he wants to raise taxes by $1.6 trillion.  That's a nonstarter.  He wants another stimulus of $50 billion.  It's already DOA on Capitol Hill.  Worse, he's back with the most fraudulent spending cut of all, $800 billion in reduced funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a few years from now when they're no longer being fought.

Obama Wants to Spend More, More, More.  President Barack Obama is demanding more than $1 trillion in new spending as part of a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, according to a top Republican Senator.  Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, is taking the White House to task for its "disappointing" effort to mislead the American people on the issues of spending and taxes.

Mantra Raves.  It's not hard if you have a show on MSNBC.  There's a mantra and all you do is repeat it, like a fourth grade math teacher going over the same fractions year after year until she starts to develop a dislike for 10-year-olds.  I get home from work and click on the TV and MSNBC's Chris Matthews is saying "the rich" aren't paying their "fair share."

Fiscal Cliff Notes: Part II.  It sounds very plausible, and constant repetition without a challenge may well be enough to convince the voting public that, if the Republican-controlled House of Representatives does not go along with Barack Obama's demands for more spending and higher tax rates on the top 2 percent, it just shows that they care more for "the rich" than for the other 98 percent.  What is remarkable is how easy it is to show how completely false Obama's argument is.  That also makes it completely inexplicable why the Republicans have not done so.

Costly Words.  I have several pet peeves, and one of them is the idea that when Americans get to keep their own money, it somehow "costs" the government.

Obama believes 'balanced' means more spending, higher taxes.  President Obama has made clear that he will not accept a deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff" that does not include tax rate increases for families making more than $250,000 annually.  But just how much will this tax increase accomplish in terms of reducing deficits and putting the nation on the right fiscal track?  As it turns out, not much.

Older news and commentary about inflation
Transplanted from this page.

It's not just gasoline — the price of everything is going up.

Federal Reserve turns the dollar into toilet paper.  Toilet paper was much on the mind of Americans Wednesday when Boston Federal Reserve chief Eric Rosengren told MarketWatch that today's higher inflation is as temporary as last year's shortage of paper products.  The toilet paper they were thinking about, though, was the green stuff in their wallets.  Rent asking prices rose an all-time record 17% between the first quarter of 2020 and the first quarter 2021. Home prices rose 12%, used car prices rose 26% and freight costs rose 17%.  That's the biggest year-on-year jump on record for rent and used cars, and a near-record for homes and freight.  Recent data are even worse; used car prices are up nearly 20% during the first four months of 2021 alone, and gasoline is up 55% during the same period.

From rents to haircuts, an unfamiliar trend is emerging for US consumers: price increases.  For American consumers who have become used to flat or even falling prices for several years, an unfamiliar sight has emerged in many corners of the economy:  Inflation is ticking up.

From rents to haircuts, Americans start to feel price hikes.  Apartment rents are up.  So are prices for restaurant meals, haircuts, gym memberships and a cup of coffee.

Rain Dances in California.  Low-priced, abundant food and cheap household water face inevitable tradeoffs in the future.  California struggles over water management, farm practices, and the limits of its natural geography are just beginning.  Water shortages worldwide portend higher food prices and battles over arable land if long-term weather patterns continue.

Despite Decline in CPI, Food Index Increases in December.  Despite a decline in the overall Consumer Price Index (CPI) in December, the food index increased and the price index for meats, poultry, fish and eggs hit a record high, according to data released today from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Price of Electricity Hit Record High in U.S. in 2014.  Even as gasoline prices plummeted and the overall energy price index calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics declined, electricity prices bucked the trend in the United States in 2014.  Data released today [1/16/2015] by the BLS indicates that the electricity price indexes hit all-time highs for the month of December and for the year.  2014 was the most-expensive year ever for electricity in the United States.

Massachusetts electric rates shoot up 37 percent.  Many Massachusetts households are going to see their electric bills shoot up 37 percent this winter, a rate increase that some advocates fear will put additional strain on low-income families.  State regulators approved the increase for National Grid household customers that would mean an average of $33 per month more for the typical residential customer and would push a typical monthly bill higher than $150.  Large-business customers will see even higher increases.

Average Price of Ground Beef Hits All-Time High.  The average price for all types of ground beef per pound hit its all-time high — $3.884 per pound — in the United States in July, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).  That was up from $3.880 per pound in June.  A year ago, in July 2013, the average price for a pound of ground beef was $3.459 per pound.  Since then, the average price for a pound of ground beef has gone up 42.1 cents — or about 12 percent.

Obama Promise Kept: Record Price for Electricity.  Remember when Obama promised that he would make the price we pay for electricity skyrocket?  That was before he was elected.  Rising electricity prices raise all other prices, in addition to lowering employment by increasing the price of doing business.  As energy prices rice, our standard of living declines.  Yet people voted for Obama anyway, possibly out of ignorance, possibly out of disbelief that he could really be as hostile to this country as he seemed.  They are paying a price for their foolishness — and so are the rest of us.

Electricity Prices Hit New Record Under Obama.  "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times," Obama said.  And he followed through.  Obviously Obama does keep the heat on a lot higher than 72 degrees and flies his dog around for a vacation.  He and his family eat whatever they want and as much as of it as they want.  But while Michelle Obama is taking food out of the mouths of schoolkids, her husband has made it more expensive to heat your home, drive your car or just turn on the lights when you get home.

Average Price of Electricity Climbs to All-Time Record.  For the first time ever, the average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity in the United States has broken through the 14-cent mark, climbing to a record 14.3 cents in June, according to data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Before this June, the highest the average price for a KWH had ever gone was 13.7 cents, the level it hit in June, July, August and September of last year.  The 14.3-cents average price for a KWH recorded this June is about 4.4 percent higher than that previous record.

M&M's, Snickers maker to raise chocolate prices 7 percent.  Mars Chocolate North America, the maker of M&M's and Snickers, said on Wednesday [7/23/2014] that it will raise its prices by an average of 7 percent "to offset rising costs," its first increase in three years.

Price of Beef and Bacon Reach All-Time High.  The price of beef and bacon hit its all-time high in the United States in June, according to data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).  In January 1980, when BLS started tracking the price of these commodities, ground chuck cost $1.82 per pound and bacon cost $1.45 per pound.  By this June 2014, ground chuck cost $3.91 per pound and bacon cost $6.11 per pound.  A decade ago, in June 2004, a pound of ground chuck cost $2.49, which means that the commodity has increased by 57 percent since then.  Bacon has increased by 78.7 percent from the $3.42 it cost in June 2004 to the $6.11 it costs now.

Hershey boosts candy prices as food costs rise.  Bad news for chocolate lovers — your favorite indulgence is about to get more expensive.  Hershey Co., the nation's leading candy producer, said Tuesday [7/15/2014] it is raising prices of chocolates [...] and other candies by 8% to combat increasing food, utility and transportation costs.  The costs for cocoa, dairy and nuts have "increased meaningfully since the beginning of the year," said Michele Buck, president of Hershey's North America, explaining that prices of these commodities "have been volatile and remain at levels that are above historical averages."

The Feds Are Right: There really is no inflation (unless you count food, gas, electricity and everything else).  Have you noticed that prices are going up rapidly?  If so, you are certainly not alone.  But Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, the Obama administration and the mainstream media would have us believe that inflation is completely under control and exactly where it should be.  Perhaps if the highly manipulated numbers that they quote us were real, everything would be fine.  But of course the way that the inflation rate is calculated has been changed more than 20 times since the 1970s, and at this point it bears so little relation to reality that it is essentially meaningless.

As Al Qaeda Approaches Baghdad, Obama Orders Department of, Defense to Fight "Seafood Fraud".  More regulations for controlling the supply chain will make it more expensive to catch and sell fish... and that will make it harder for working families to eat.  Not that Obama cares about working families except when he's reading from a teleprompter.

Price of meat, fish and eggs rockets to an all time high.  The price of meat, eggs and fish rose hit an all time high in May — pricier than at any point since 1967 when the Consumer Price Index began tracking items.  Food costs jumped 0.5%, the largest increase since August 2011, as meat, poultry fish and eggs rose 1.4% and fruits and vegetables rose 1.1% according to the Labor Department's Consumer Price Index.  The priced have been rising for months, in part because of a drought in California, historically thin cattle herds and a virus in the pork population.

Price Index for Meats, Poultry, Fish & Eggs Rockets to All-Time High.  The seasonally-adjusted price index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs hit an all-time high in May, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).  In January 1967, when the BLS started tracking this measure, the index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs was 38.1.  As of last May, it was 234.572.

Return of the 'pink slime': Customers flock back to controversial meat product.  The leftover beef trimmings derisively known as 'pink slime' is making a comeback two years after a series of graphic news broadcasts devastated sales.  Two of the largest makers of the ground beef product are reporting a rebound in customers thanks in part to rising prices of its higher-quality counterparts.  Average ground beef prices have jumped 10 percent this year to an all-time high of $3.808 per pound in April, according to the Bureau of Labor.

Your electric bill will skyrocket with new energy regulation.  Electricity prices are probably on their way up across much of the US as coal-fired plants, the dominant source of cheap power, shut down in response to environmental regulations and economic forces.  New and tighter pollution rules and tough competition from cleaner sources such as natural gas, wind and solar will lead to the closings of dozens of coal-burning plants across 20 states over the next three years.  And many of those that stay open will need expensive retrofits.  Because of these and other factors, the Energy Department predicts retail power prices will rise 4 percent on average this year, the biggest increase since 2008.  By 2020, prices are expected to climb an additional 13 percent, a forecast that does not include the costs of coming environmental rules.

USDA warns of sticker shock on U.S. beef as grilling season starts.  The Department of Agriculture has warned of sticker shock facing home chefs on the eve of the Memorial Day holiday weekend, the unofficial start of the U.S. summer grilling season.

U.S. electricity prices may be going up for good.  As temperatures plunged to 16 below zero in Chicago in early January and set record lows across the eastern U.S., electrical system managers implored the public to turn off stoves, dryers and even lights or risk blackouts.  A fifth of all power-generating capacity in a grid serving 60 million people went suddenly offline, as coal piles froze, sensitive electrical equipment went haywire and utility operators had trouble finding enough natural gas to keep power plants running.  The wholesale price of electricity skyrocketed to nearly $2 per kilowatt hour, more than 40 times the normal rate.

U.S. barbecues grow pricier as beef, pork reach record highs.  Retail beef and pork prices reached all-time highs last month, according to Bill Hahn, agricultural economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.  That's prompting some consumers to pivot to less expensive protein sources and driving the grocery, packaged food and restaurant industries to adjust portion sizes, tweak their menus and roll out new products in a bid to address higher food costs without driving customers away.

Electricity Price Surged to All-Time Record for March.  The average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity hit a March record of 13.5 cents, according data released yesterday [4/15/2014] by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  That was up about 5.5 percent from 12.8 cents per KWH in March 2013.  The relative price of electricity in the United States tends to rise in spring, peak in summer, and decline in fall.  Last year, after the price of a KWH averaged 12.8 cents in March, it rose to an all-time high of 13.7 cents in June, July, August and September.

Obama delivers on promise to make electricity prices skyrocket.  Millions of Americans are dealing with skyrocketing electricity prices and it looks like costs will be going even higher.

Price of Ground Beef Climbs to Another Record High.  The seasonally adjusted price index for uncooked ground beef jumped 3.8 percent from January to February, as the average price for a pound of 100-percent ground chuck rose from approximately $3.59 in January to a new record high of $3.73 in February, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The BLS's seasonally adjusted price index measures the relative change in the price of product from a baseline of 100.  From January to February, the price index for uncooked ground beef rose from 248.864 to 258.323, its highest level ever.  The 258.323 price index also indicates that the seasonally adjusted price for ground beef is almost twice what it was in January 2001 when the price index was 130.4.

Rising food prices bite into household budgets.  Prices are rising for a range of food staples, from meat and pork to fruits and vegetables, squeezing consumers still struggling with modest wage gains.  Food prices rose 0.4% in February, the most since September 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday [3/18/2014].  Beef and veal shoppers were socked with some of the biggest increases, as prices jumped 4% from January.  Overall inflation remained tame, as falling gasoline and other energy costs offset the food price increases.  The consumer price index ticked up just 0.1% from January and 1.1% in the past year.

The Editor says...
There's one easy solution at hand:  Eliminate ethanol requirements in gasoline and ethanol subsidies for farmers.

Electricity Price Index Soars to New Record at Start of 2014; U.S. Electricity Production Declining.  The electricity price index soared to a new high in January 2014 with the largest month-to-month increase in almost four years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Meanwhile, data from the Energy Information Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy, indicates that electricity production in the United States has declined since 2007, when it hit its all-time peak.  The U.S. is producing less electricity than it did seven years ago for a population that has added more than 14 million people.

The price of a gallon of milk headed towards record high.  Picking up a gallon of milk at the grocery store is getting pricier and the cost could hit a record high for U.S. consumers in March, analysts warned.  Strong global demand and stagnant production in other countries has led to increased exports of U.S. dairy products in recent months, generating more money for dairy farmers but resulting in likely price hikes of 10-20 percent at the retail level in some markets, according to analysts.

Food Prices Skyrocketing Since 2011 While Wages Stagnant.  CBS News reports that the combination of food prices being inflated and the stagnation of wages is threatening the middle class.  The report noted that staples such as chicken, ground beef, and bacon have skyrocketed in price since 2011:  the price of chicken is 18.4% more than it was; ground beef is up 16.8%; and bacon saw a huge increase of 22.8% in price.  These price hikes came despite the federal government's sunny assertion that prices in general have only increased 6.4% in that period.

Price of Chicken Reaches All-Time High in U.S..  The price for fresh whole chickens hit its all-time high in the United States in October, according to data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  In January 1980, when BLS started tracking the price of this commodity, fresh whole chickens cost $0.69 per pound.  By this October 2003, fresh whole chickens cost $1.54 per pound.

The Editor says...
What is the primary ingredient in chicken feed?  Corn — which is currently being diverted to the production of ethanol.

Keywords:  necessarily skyrocket.
Price of Electricity Hit Record for October; Up 42% in Decade.  The price of electricity hit a record for the month of October, according to data released Wednesday [11/20/2013] by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  That made October the eleventh straight month when the average price of electricity hit or matched the record level for that month.  The average price of electricity in October was 13.2 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH), up from 12.8 cents per KWH in October 2012 — and up from 9.3 cents per KWH in October 2003.  Americans now pay 42 percent more for electricity than they did a decade ago.

Milk Prices May Soar to $8 a Gallon.  Partisan gridlock in Congress may lead to sharply higher milk prices in the new year.  It's the latest sign that the deep divide between Democrats and Republicans is having a direct impact on consumers and the economy.  Milk prices could at least double in January if there is no agreement on farm price supports.  The current fight over the $80 billion-a-year food stamp program is a big part of this.

The Editor says...
The article immediately above appears to be an attempt by ABC News to alarm the populace, in order to help push the food stamp bill through Congress.  Lots of things could happen by January.  As long as food stamps and farm subsidies are tied together, both will probably pass.  The only difference between the farm subsidies and the food stamps is that one gives other people's money to producers and the other gives other people's money to sponges.

Price Fixing Milk.  Washington's dairy policy is such a mess that even Congress would be hard pressed to make it worse, but Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson and a few Republicans are trying.  As ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, Mr. Peterson is the guardian angel of his state's giant Land O'Lakes dairy co-op.  The House will vote Wednesday [6/19/2013] whether to retain his latest farm-bill gift to milk producers in the form of a new Soviet-style supply program to raise prices.

High prices are driving more motorists to rent tires.  Chains such as Rent-a-Wheel and Rimco are seeing business boom.  Many consumers pay double or triple the cost of buying and face aggressive repossession policies.

The $2.7 Trillion Medical Bill.  In many other developed countries, a basic colonoscopy costs just a few hundred dollars and certainly well under $1,000.  That chasm in price helps explain why the United States is far and away the world leader in medical spending, even though numerous studies have concluded that Americans do not get better care.  Whether directly from their wallets or through insurance policies, Americans pay more for almost every interaction with the medical system.

Pricey Beef Puts Heat on U.S. Grilling Season.  As Americans prepare for Memorial Day — the official kickoff to a summer grilling season of burgers and T-bones — rising beef prices have some consumers balking in the grocery aisles.  Retail beef prices are widely expected to set new records in coming weeks after wholesale prices, or the amount meatpackers charge sellers for beef, hit an all-time peak this past week.

Obama's Zero-Sum Game and the Coming Redistribution Bubble.  By printing too much money, Obama will create inflation.  Inflation will cause the value of everyone's dollars to decline, resulting in an effective pay cut for all.  The only tool the Federal Reserve has to control inflation is to raise interest rates; these higher rates will themselves cause prices to increase and put great pressure on the federal budget to cut spending in many programs.  Inflation is also a tax on the poor.

Inflation is Theft!  One of the biggest consequences of inflation is that it impacts poor people disproportionally.  People living on fixed incomes, social security and welfare recipients, and those who work on fixed hourly wages suffer the most as the value of their labor or savings decrease proportionately to the cost of living.

Big Brother's pencil-pushing bureaucrats guarantee high prices will stay high.
Louisiana stops sale of cheap milk at market.  A Louisiana supermarket was forced to yank its low-cost milk special after state auditors objected to the price.  Fresh Markets in Perkins Rowe was selling milk for $2.99 a gallon as part of a weekly promotion deal, but Louisiana requires that retailer markups be at least 6 percent above invoice and shipping costs, The Advocate reports.  State Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain said Fresh Market violated state regulations by selling milk below cost as part of a promotion.

State stops sale of cheap milk.  For Lafayette stockbroker Kenneth Daigle, buying a gallon of milk is no longer the bargain it used to be on Tuesdays at Fresh Market.  The upscale supermarket chain yanked milk from its $2.99 once-a-week promotion after a state auditor objected to the low price.

Obama's Stealth Redistribution Strategy.  How is inflation redistributive?  While not actually taking from one and giving to another, inflation satisfies the first step of the two-step redistribution process:
Step One: Reduce the wealth of the bourgeoisie.
Step Two: Increase the wealth of the proletariat.
The liberals, progressives, communists (or whatever label you're using these days) never achieve their redistribution goals, as they often fail at or before Step Two. But [...] the redistribution effort is seen as a success, by them and in hindsight, if only Step One occurred.

Your Future in Obama World.  When you shop for food or buy gas, you must have noticed prices going up, a dime here, a dime there.  Inflation is already happening, thanks to Obama policies:  limits on drilling and refusal to permit the Keystone pipeline drive up fuel costs.  Shutting down power plants drives up utility costs.  Printing money to offset federal debt inflates everything.  Most goods and services will keep getting more expensive.

Is Ben Bernanke Unleashing Inflation?  Conservative economists are paying attention to the man behind the curtain and not liking what they see.

Colder winter will increase heating costs.  Heating costs are likely to significantly rise this winter, due primarily to much colder weather rather than higher prices, according to a government report released Wednesday [10/10/2012].

Bacon, pork shortage 'now unavoidable,' industry group says.  Might want to get your fill of ham this year, because "a world shortage of pork and bacon next year is now unavoidable," according to an industry trade group.  Blame the drought conditions that blazed through the corn and soybean crop this year.

Global bacon, pork shortage 'now unavoidable' in 2013.  Bacon lovers are advised to start bulk buying the breakfast favorite or switch to an alternative, as 'a world shortage of pork and bacon next year is now unavoidable,' warns an industry trade group.  Annual production for Europe's main pig producers fell across the board between 2011 and 2012, a trend that 'is being mirrored around the world', warns Britain's National Pig Association.

Wait — maybe we haven't reached "peak bacon".
There Will Be No Bacon Shortage.  How a British trade association press release sent the Internet into a senseless panic.

Price-Hiking Scheme Hidden In Farm Bill Would Constrict Dairy Production.  In the midst of this lingering recession, Americans may have doubts about what Congress can do to help repair the economy  — but very few would expect Congress to do something intentional to drive up the price of our milk, a classic indicator of economic health and the buying power of the American family.  Yet, your future trips to the grocery store could prove painful as the price of milk is [incremented], higher and higher, affecting all dairy-related products from pizza to yogurt.

Price of Ground Beef Hits Record High.  The average price of ground beef hit a record high in the United States in July, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The BLS has been tracking the average price of a pound of 100% ground beef since 1984.  In July, it cost $3.085, up from $3.007 in June.  Prior to June, the average cost of 100% ground beef in the United States had never topped $3.00.

Obama's economy hits the dinner table.  Over the last three and half years, we've seen median incomes fall.  Workers are making less, provided they have jobs at all.  Unemployment has been above 8 percent for 42 straight months, and over 23 million people are struggling to find enough work.  Behind those numbers are real families that are hurting.  Every time they go to the store, things get a little more difficult.  Milk is more expensive.  The price of bread has ticked up.

Obama Economy: Food Prices Skyrocketed in 2011.  So you think you've been paying more for groceries because your food bill is too high?  You're right.  Barack Obama is consuming fine dining while you're putting another helping of macaroni on your plate.  In 2011, with Obama's inflation beginning to hit, prices skyrocketed for staples that you consume, according to the government:
  •   Beef: +10.2%
  •   Pork: +8.5%
  •   Fish: +7.1%
  •   Eggs: +9.2%
  •   Dairy: +6.8%
  •   Oils and Fats: +9.3%
Thanks to those kinds of prices, more and more people are opting to stay home for dinner — restaurants are simply too expensive.

Drought threatening to drive up food prices.  President Obama took a brief break from the heated 2012 race Wednesday [7/18/2012] to focus on the nation's most pervasive drought in decades, a parching of farmland that could push up food prices and further imperil Obama's economic pitch to voters.  Obama met at the White House with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who was then dispatched to tout the administration's commitment to monitoring the drought and pushing Congress to aid embattled farmers and ranchers.

World Food Prices Spike As Soy Harvest Collapse.  Middle class Americans grumble when prices go up at the supermarket ($5 bucks for a box of cornflakes?  Are these people insane?) but for billions of people all over the world rising food prices can mean the difference between happy kids and hungry ones, between having a little money for extras at the end of the week and skipping meals.

Animal Rights Legislation Would Make Eggs a Luxury Food.  One day soon, America could wake up to a dozen eggs costing $8 or more.  And unless you are involved in some aspect of farming or agriculture, you would never know that egg prices are about to skyrocket or the reason why.

Pain At The Pump And Pain At The Checkout Line.  From the clothes on your back to the shoes on your feet to that backpack for junior, rising oil prices made worse by restricted domestic supply have affected the cost of far more things than we realize.  When the railroads and trucks that deliver food to the supermarket pay more for diesel fuel, the added cost shows up when you pay for your groceries at checkout.

Sticker shock! New car prices jump nearly 7% to record.  After several years of heavily discounting their products in a desperate bid to keep assembly lines rolling, automakers are finding themselves back in the driver's seat again — pushing prices to record levels.  And it's "not a blip," warns one senior analyst, who expects the trend to continue for several years.

Food inflation seen back on the table as prices rise.  World food prices are likely to rise for a third successive month in March, and could gain further beyond that, with expensive oil and chronically low stocks of some key grains putting food inflation firmly back on the economic agenda.

Ham Prices High Heading Into Easter Holiday.  Ham prices have been higher than usual for the past two years because the cost of pig feed has gone up, and some major pork producers are spending millions to convert barns as they phase out cramped cages used to confine pregnant sows.

No, you're not imagining it; your grocery bill is going up fast.  Inflation is under control, we're told.  The Fed?  No worries says Bernanke.  The White House?  Never heard the word "inflation" before.  But you, me, your neighbors, and anyone who goes shopping at the grocery store these days knows [very] well that prices are going through the roof.

No Inflation? General Mills Begs to Differ.  General Mills came out Wednesday [3/21/2012] with their Q3 earnings, and what do you suppose was one of the top points they wanted to make to their investors?  Just that they were experiencing significantly higher input costs year-over-year.

Denny's to raise menu prices.  One day after Starbucks announced it was increasing prices on some of its beverages, Denny's, the national restaurant chain with just over 1,600 locations, said it too is considering a price hike this year.

Hyperinflation: Can It Happen Here?  In the middle of 1914, just before the war, a one pound loaf of bread cost [the equivalent of] 13 cents [in Germany].  Two years later it was 19 cents.  Two years more and it sold for 22 cents.  By 1919 it was 26 cents. ... In 1920, a loaf of bread soared to $1.20, and then in 1921 it hit $1.35.  By the middle of 1922 it was $3.50.  At the start of 1923 it rocketed to $700 a loaf.  Five months later a loaf went for $1200.  By September it was $2 million.  A month later it was $670 million.  The next month it hit $3 billion.  By mid month it was $100 billion.

Get your peanut butter — before prices soar.  Prices for a ton of runner peanuts, commonly used to make peanut butter, hit nearly $1,200 this week, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  That's up from just $450 per ton a year ago.

Prices of OJ, Milk and Gas Skyrocket.  Mornings for Americans are about to get a lot more expensive:  The prices of orange juice, milk and gas are spiking and all are expected to go even higher.

Sticker shock at the grocery as soaring wheat prices mean more expensive food.  If you think the cost of gassing up your car is outrageous, wait until you need to restock your pantry.  The price of wheat has more than tripled in the U.S. during the past 10 months, making Americans' daily bread — and bagels and pizza and pasta — feel a little like luxury items.  Baked goods aren't the only ones getting more expensive:  Experts expect 80 percent of grocery prices will spike too, and could remain steep for years.

Hyperinflation is a Small Price to Pay?  Despite government propaganda every shopper knows inflation is already a serious problem.  The Financial Times presented annual price increases for various items, which included the following:
  •   heating oil +41%
  •   copper +59%
  •   silver +91%
  •   palladium +212%
  •   corn +91%
  •   wheat +79%
  •   cotton +143%
These data indicate that inflation is upon us.  The magnitude of these numbers suggests hyperinflation.

Companies Warn That Higher Prices Are Looming.  Cotton prices are near their highest level in more than a decade, after adjusting for inflation, and leather and polyester costs are jumping as well.  Copper recently hit its highest level in about 40 years, and iron ore, used for steel, is fetching extremely high prices.  Prices for corn, sugar, wheat, beef, pork and coffee are soaring.  Labor overseas is becoming more expensive, meanwhile, and so are the utility bills to keep a factory running.

Hyper-caffeinated coffee prices hit 14-year high.  Coffee prices hit a 14-year high this week, and it's only a matter of time before java lovers will have to pay more in stores and coffee shops.

Boiling Middle America Slowly.  The Associated Press begins a story about the rising cost of basic necessities as follows:  "Wholesale prices jumped last month by the most in nearly two years due to higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in 36 years.  Excluding those volatile categories, inflation was tame."  Whew!  Glad inflation is tame!  It would be awful if we had to deal with rising costs for essential goods... oh, wait.  That is what's happening.

Supermarket prices soar in Manhattan and across the country.  What's in your wallet?  Not much — especially after a trip to the supermarket. ... The price index for groceries is expected to surge 3 to 4 percent nationally this year, according to the US Dept. of Agriculture.

Inflation Rears Its Ugly Head.  Food prices today are the highest on record, rising at double-digit rates.  Meanwhile, gasoline tests the $4-a-gallon level, the dollar is weakening and gold is near its all-time high.  At this pace, prices for the basics used by businesses will double in less than a decade, pushing millions of Americans down the economic ladder as they struggle to keep up.

US food price rise is steepest in decades.  The cost of producing finished foods jumped 3.9pc last month from a year earlier, as harsh winter weather exacerbated the already increasing price of many basic ingredients used in food.  The increase was the steepest since November 1974.  With oil prices having spiked on the political upheaval in North Africa and the Middle East, energy costs were 3.3pc higher in the month, according to a report on producer prices from the Labor Department.

Beef prices soar.  If you're already shocked by how much your favorite cut of beef costs at the supermarket, brace yourself because prices will keep going up.  Surging commodity prices already have consumers paying more for groceries such as eggs, milk, cereal and meat.  The price of beef in particular has shot through the roof.

The Editor says...
Somehow the writer of this article managed to avoid mentioning ethanol, which I suspect is the primary cause for the increase in the price of beef and many other foods.

Rising Food Prices Fueling Global Problems.  Corn affects most food products in stores.  It is used to feed cattle, hogs, and chickens that fill the meat aisles.  It also sweetens most soft drinks and many other foods.

More about ethanol.

Government's Stealth Takeover of Food:  Been to the grocery store lately?  Prices are up and food packages are shrinking.  Call it stealth inflation.  There's no hiding the skyrocketing price of gas that hits you in the face every time you fill up the tank.  But food?  Last year's steep rise in the price of wheat, corn, coffee, and chocolate is now rippling through the food chain, but the food industry is working overtime to mask food price inflation.

Rising food costs could be politically troubling.  Presidents aren't used to worrying about the price of meat and milk.  But inflation has tripped up a president before.  Ask Jimmy Carter.  Now, President Barack Obama faces the twin prospects of rising gasoline and food prices as he prepares to gear up a re-election campaign.

Inflating Our Way to a Government-Controlled Economy.  Spiraling food prices, record energy costs and federally mandated health insurance reflect this Administration's slavish ideological devotion to the centralized planning of key sectors of the American economy.  So, what are the current results of Obama's indoctrination of America into progressive collectivism?  Global food costs have risen an astonishing 29% in the past year, and almost 4% a month between October and January of 2011.

Gold tops $1,500 for first time.  Gold prices topped a record $1,500 for the first time ever on Tuesday [4/19/2011], shattering an important psychological barrier as investors seek out investments thought to be safe during times of upheaval.

Coffee prices highest in 34 years.  Coffee prices have topped $3 a pound for the first time in more than 34 years.  A drop in supplies of high-grade arabica coffee beans and a growing taste for upmarket coffee among the middle classes of China, Brazil, Indonesia and India are blamed for the sharp rise.

The voters are making the connection between Obama and the cost of their milk and their gas.
Obamaflation Arrives.  President Obama will not be re-elected.  Period.  Why?  Obamaflation has arrived, and this is what it looks like.  Milk.  A gallon of skim.  At the local Giant in Central Pennsylvania:
January 11, 2011: $3.20
February 28, 2011: $3.24
March 6, 2011: $3.34
April 23, 2011: $3.48
That would be a 28 cent rise in a mere 102 days, from January to April of this year.

Be prepared to pay more at checkout.  Households reeling from gasoline near $4 a gallon also face bigger bills for everything from changing their babies' diapers to wiping their noses to treating themselves to ice cream.

Obama Economy Worse Than 1970s.  America's middle class is getting poorer; a record number of middle class workers are out of work.  If you are lucky enough to have a job, your wages aren't going up, but you are facing higher prices for everything.

Starbucks to raise packaged coffee price by 17 percent.  Starbucks Corp. is raising the cost of its packaged coffee sold in its U.S. retail stores by an average of 17 percent, its first such increase since 2009, a spokesman said on Wednesday [5/25/2011].

Beef prices expected to climb for the next two years.  The smallest cattle herd since the 1950s likely will mean higher beef prices at the supermarket for the next two years.

Gasoline Prices and Dollar Prices.  It's not that gasoline is more expensive; it's just that your dollars are worth less.  But neither the media nor the political establishment wants you to realize the real reason Americans are experiencing pain at the pump.