Via BBC: Why is inflation in the US so high?

Inflation is at a nearly all time high in the US at 8.6%. This is amazingly high, higher than in most other countries in the world.

In an attempt to protect the socialist policies put in place, the BBC points the finger firmly at the people of the US spending so much.

A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco concluded that pandemic relief packages probably contributed to 3 percentage points of the rise in inflation until the end of 2021 – a factor that goes a long way to explaining why US inflation outpaced the rest of the world.

Oscar Jorda, senior policy adviser at the bank and one of the people who worked on the study, cautioned against reading too much into the exact percentages, but said the overall picture is clear.

“These programmes… were a considerable infusion of liquidity into consumers’ pockets at a time when perhaps industry wasn’t quite ready to respond to an increase in demand,” he said in an interview in May. They “signified a big push of what I would call demand push inflation”.

There you have it. Because you were out of work because of shutdowns and the government handed you a few dollars, YOU caused the inflation when you spent it.

If you had just saved that money then inflation wouldn’t be so bad.

Historically, when inflation gets bad, people spend money as soon as they have it to convert money into hard goods. To put this in perspective of today, people are moving to keeping their vehicle gas tanks mostly full.

The cost, to me, of filling my tank last week vs filling my tank this week was about $8.50. That’s a $0.50 increase in the price of gas. When you are afraid your money will be worth less tomorrow, you want hard goods now. We bought a 1/2 cow because we know the price of beef is going up. We bought more chickens, we know that the price of eggs is going up and making our own eggs reduces our weekly food bill.

In addition to all of the above, the demand continues to grow for hard goods. This also increases prices.

If you are interested in a good introductory book on economics:
Basic Economics, Fifth Edition: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell

Some areas of society are righting themselves after the Left’s overreach.

I’ve covered three Leftists prosecutors getting curbed.

There is a fast and growing backlash against the queer takeover of schools, and transgender ideology and drag queens forced on children.

The next is fat pride or fatphobia.

I thought this would have gone away on 2021 when we discovered that being obese was the top comorbidity with COVID fatalities.

COVID kills fat people.

If you want a better chance at surviving COVID, don’t be fat.

A treadmill and gym membership is far better protection against COVID than the vaccine.

But I guess that wasn’t enough of a shock.

Miguel wrote about a teenager, who at nearly 400 lbs, died when he fell off a rollercoaster.

Now I’m bringing you a story of a plus sized model who was too far for horseback riding.

TikTok Star Remi Bader Says Ranch Mistreated Her and Refused to Let Her Ride Horses Due to Her Weight
Remi Bader said the incident at Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk, New York was “very embarrassing”

Fashion influencer and curve model Remi Bader claims that a ranch wouldn’t allow her to ride horses due to her weight.

On Saturday, the social media star, 26, shared a TikTok which detailed her experience at Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk, New York.

“Shoutout to Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk for making me leave because I weigh over 240,” she wrote over a clip of the ranch.

In the caption of the video, Bader claimed she has experience riding horses and “never had this issue,” adding, “Please adverise this on your signs for the future.”

The Ranch has it on their website that riders should not be more than 15% the weight of a horse, which seems to be about 240 lbs.

Thats also an industry standard for the health of horses.

She is 5-foot, 7-inches tall and is within 10 lbs of my 6-fooy, 3-inch manly frame.

She’s fat.

She decided she would shame the ranch for not letting her distress one of their horses with her fat ass.

Good on the ranch.

She needs to save a horse and ride a Peloton.

I get it.  I’ve suffered a weight problem all my life. But through diligence, self control, and hard work I managed to come to a position that it manageable for me.

Fat pride is just another turning a vice into victim status.

Self indulgence and a lack of self control into “society is prejudiced against me.”

No.  Fuck you.

Get yourself under control if you want to ride a horse or go on a rollercoaster or reduce your chances of dying of COVID.

I hope the pushback against this sucks for fat people.

Via Yahoo Finance: More than half of U.S. teachers are considering leaving the profession: Survey

Can we get the politics out of the classroom?

–Randi Weingarten

My wife is a teacher, she applied for an online teaching job this year. She wants out of the brick and mortar schools. And it isn’t the money. Nor is it ungrounded fear of “school shootings”. It is violence within the schools.

For the last school year they have had two or three students that have controlled the school. These are kids that refused to stay in class. Refused to obey instructions. Threw things, broke things, vandalized classroom, attacked and teachers. One teacher had her arm broken by one of these children. (Grades k-5).

All the teachers are tired of the alert messages that tell them that the good students have to be held inside their classrooms because the animals have taken over part of the school again. (For the liberal bleeding hearts, race doesn’t come into this question.)

But according to Yahoo it is that teachers don’t get paid enough.

But the real reason that teachers are thinking of leaving the profession is:

“What [teachers] really want is they want us to do the common sense gun safety precautions that are being talked about in Washington right now, that Governor Hochul did in New York state with the legislature just a few days ago, that GOP Governor Baker did in Massachusetts a few years ago, what the overwhelming number of Americans — Republican, Democrat, Independent — want us to do: They want something done,” Weingarten said.

Weingarten said this while trying to get politics out of the classroom. Maybe she should keep politics out of the classroom too?

Yes, there are teachers in the local school system that are terrified of school shootings, but hardening the schools with armed guards is not acceptable. It will frighten the children. I don’t understand how that is more frightening than doing lock down drills.

Evaluating Teacher Pay

If some teacher or teacher’s representative tells you they don’t get paid enough, make sure you do the actual math. You need to know the teachers salary, the value of the benefits package and the number of contract hours. A nominal contract is for 185 days per year.

So compare a teacher making $50,000/year and a nurse making $50,000/year. Ignoring benefits.

The nurse makes $24.03/hour. The teacher makes $33.78/hour. If the teacher worked full time, year round like other employees, then they would be making the same $24.03/hour. The difference between being paid $50k/2080hrs and $50k/1480hrs

Via Roger Williams University Law Review, Spring 2006:
The Obfuscation of Rhode Island’s Clearly Expressed Constitutional Right to Bear Arms: Mosby v. Devine

Claudia J. Matzko does a great job of going over how the courts abuse RKBA. Trying to conflate group rights with individual rights.

It never ceases to amaze me that “The right of The People” seems to mean “the right of the state” or “the right of the militia” to so many people.

Via Go Local Prov: Senate Approves Large Magazine Ban on Floor – Bypassing Own Committee

The bill was part of a larger package of gun infringement laws, most in direct contradiction to the constitution:

Article I, § 22 of the Constitution of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Last time I quoted from Google Search referencing Giffards. I love that the RI RKBA is so short and clear.

The Democrats had a large slate of bills infringing on the RKBA. It got side tracked into committee where it stalled in a 50/50 split.

Because they weren’t winning via normal means, the Dem’s pulled this one bill out of committee to the floor where they voted on it and passed it.

I don’t directly follow RI politics but I believe this means the bill is on the way to the governors office for signature now. This is a ban on standard capacity magazines.

Via Fox News Jean-Pierre claims Americans can ‘take on inflation’ because of Biden American Rescue Plan

In an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon:

Jean-Pierre said on CNN that Americans must understand the position President Biden was in when he took office and asserted that the U.S. economy is “bouncing back.” She added that the administration believes they are in a “good position” to take on inflation.

“We’ve got to remember when thinking about gas prices and food this is coming from Putin’s war against Ukraine,” Jean-Pierre caveated. “The moment that Putin amassed forces on the border of Ukraine, we saw from then until now, we have seen a $2 increase per gallon on gas.”

Nothing is Joe’s fault. It is all the fault of the mean tweets.

She said that because of the American Rescue Plan we are all in a place where we can “take on” inflation.

I’m sorry, I’ve not seen my income increase to match inflation. I’ve not seen my wife’s salary increase.

What I’ve seen is that the gap between income and expenses is getting very very thin and soon will be near zero. We are already making decisions on which of two items we purchase. Do we feed the vehicles or do we feed the family. Fortunately for us we have food. It is the costs of everything else that scares me.

I saw AWA’s post on a Democrat Senator who wants to impose a 21% tax on oil profits.

Their justification is anti-price gouging.

Before I saw his post I saw this story at Fox Business:

Biden threatens oil companies with ’emergency powers’ if they don’t boost supply amid inflation spike

President Biden may resort to using emergency powers if American oil companies don’t increase output at their refineries, the president told oil CEOs in a series of letters Wednesday.

Biden’s statement blames oil companies for running “historically high profit margins” even as Americans experience surging gas prices. Biden has recently faced criticism for a lack of executive action aimed at curbing inflation.

“There is no question that Vladimir Putin is principally responsible for the intense financial pain the American people and their families are bearing,” Biden wrote. “But amid a war that has raised gasoline prices more than $1.70 per gallon, historically high refinery profit margins are worsening that pain.”

“Your companies and others have an opportunity to take immediate actions to increase the supply of gasoline, diesel and other refined product you are producing,” he continued. “My administration is prepared to use all reasonable and appropriate Federal Government tools and emergency authorities to increase refinery capacity and output in the near term, and to ensure that every region of this country is appropriately supplied.”

I don’t know if Democrats actually believe this or just use it as a talking point for the masses but it’s clear that their narrative is that the oil and gas industry is sitting on huge supplies of crude and massive amounts of production capacity but are throttling supply to drive up prices to maximize their profits.

Of course, for this to work all the oil and gas companies – including overseas oil companies – must be in cahoots operating as an illegal cartel.

Reality it completely different.

The biggest problem is that the US is closing refineries.

There were several reasons for this.

COVID shutdowns reduced demand for gas.  Refineries closed and now are not easily turned back on.

Environmental regulations make it difficult to impossible to upgrade capacity of existing refineries or build new ones.

The Democrats’ push away from gas dissuades investors from investing in refinery construction or upgrades.  If states will ban gasoline in 10 years why invest in building a refinery that won’t be profitable for 20 years?

Refineries are currently running at about 95% capacity, which is maximum safe capacity.

There is no more capacity to kick in.

The growth of China, India, and other countries means were competing for overseas refined product.

The analogy is a draft horse pulling a wagon that is too heavy as fast as it can, and Biden threatening to beat it harder if it does pull faster and Democrat Senator threatening to take 21% of its food away as punishment.

Add to this that the Biden Administration has canceled drilling leases in New Mexico, Alaska, and offshore.

So what will Biden do?

He won’t reverse his drilling ban or cut back EPA regulations or encourage long-term investment in oil and gas.

The fact is that it doesn’t matter if they really believe their narrative or not, they do not understand what the problem is and their actions will destroy the petroleum industry, and that’s the point.

We will feel it here.

I believe they are banking on Democrat Privilege – being judged on intentions and not results – to save them.

They will be praised as “doing something for working Americans” while driving gas past $10/gal, and letting the petroleum industry catch the blame.