Glenn Kirschner – Lindsey Graham’s ongoing legal tantrum, trying to avoid testifying about Trump’s Georgia crimes
The Lincoln Project – Liz Cheney: Flip or Skip
MSNBC – GONE VIRAL: The Political Ad Women Have Been Waiting For
Robert Reich – How Wealth Inequality Spiraled Out of Control
Shared from Twitter by In The Public Interest (ITPT) – How the Dutch built a tunnel under a highway in one weekend (No sound – the visual says it all.)
Beau – Let’s talk about spears and relief logistics…. (Beau was so hot on Monday that I am going to get a bit behind with his videos. If I need to, I’ll double up some.)
Yesterday, Despite not having slept all that well, I got the blog posts up and sent the weekly email, but I didn’t do much else. An unexpected but very welcom Sound Off! did go up before the end of the day – don’t miss it.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
Psyche (via Aeon) – The power of Langston Hughes’s ‘melancholy citizenship’
Quote – Hughes calls the people ‘humble, hungry, mean … despite the dream’. Whether one is ‘the poor white, fooled and pushed apart’ or ‘the Negro bearing slavery’s scars’, ‘the red man driven from the land’ or ‘the immigrant clutching the hope I seek’, all must live in the space between abstract ideals and the bitter world. To create a world better than the one into which we are born, Hughes urges victims of colonisation and slavery to find ways to discover common ground with beneficiaries of past injustices. Click through for full idea. Poetry is not scary. It’s mostly the expressions of simple truths in unexpected ways that make people see them as new, even if thet’re actually very old.
Letters From An American – July 23, 2022
Quote – Rising autocrats have declared democracy obsolete. They argue that popular government is too slow to respond to the rapid pace of the modern world, or that liberal democracy’s focus on individual rights undermines the traditional values that hold societies together, values like religion and ethnic or racial similarities. Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, whom the radical right supports so enthusiastically that he is speaking on August 4 in Texas at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), has called for replacing liberal democracy with “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy,” which will explicitly not treat everyone equally and will rest power in a single political party. Click through for full letter. Richardson is not being alarmist. She makes it pellucidly clear what we are up against. This needs to be read or heard by every American, particularly every American who is not already deeply aware of politics.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
When you live with unfettered capitalism, pretty much anything that happens which involves money will also make inequality worse. And inflation is no exception.Without further ado, here are the facts and figures.
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Inflation inequality: Poorest Americans are hit hardest by soaring prices on necessities
But behind the headline number that’s been widely reported is something that often gets overlooked: Inflation affects different households in different ways – and sometimes hurts those with the least, the most.
Inflation, as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is designed to track the price increases in a typical U.S. household’s basket of goods. The problem is spending bundles differ across households. For example, a family in the lowest 20% of income typically spends around 15% of their budget on groceries – this is nearly 60% more than households in the top 20% of the income distribution, according to my calculations.
The widening inflation gap
On Jan. 12, 2022, the BLS released figures showing that inflation jumped by 7% in December from a year earlier – the fastest pace since 1982. To see how this varied across households, I used the bureau’s own price data and factored in the typical spending habits of different income groups.
I calculate that inflation is running at 7.2% for the lowest income households – higher than for any other group. For the highest income families, the rate of change was 6.6%.
The difference between the two income groups steadily increased throughout 2021, starting the year at just 0.16 percentage point but ending at 0.6 percentage point – near the highest it has been since 2010.
The reason for this widening rich-poor inflation gap, known by economists as inflation inequality, comes down to the typical spending habits of people in each income group.
In times of economic uncertainty and recession, most households tend to hold back on buying luxury goods. But by and large, people can’t cut down on necessities such as groceries and heating – although wealthier consumers are better placed to stock up on these necessities when prices are cheap.
This shift of spending away from luxury items like vacations and new cars, and toward necessities, pushes inflation up for poorer families more than richer ones. This is because lower-income households dedicate a higher percentage of their income on necessities.
My data shows that this inflation gap tends to be widest in times of recession or in the early stages of economic recovery. In the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the gap in inflation rates between the lowest and highest income groups was close to 1 percentage point – higher than it is now.
By contrast, in times of economic growth – for example, from 2012 to 2018 – the gap narrows. It even inverted at one point in 2016; the inflation rate for poorer Americans was almost a half-percentage point lower than that of richer Americans.
The main driver of the growing gap in 2021 was the increases in groceries and gas prices. This has made inflation run hotter for all households. But given the greater proportion of household income that poorer families dedicate to food and energy costs, it has affected them more.
Take out gas and grocery prices, then the inflation gap is reduced significantly.
Going forward, I expect the inflation gap will follow a similar pattern as we saw after the Great Recession – as economic recovery turns into continued expansion, inflation will be lower for low-income households than high-income households.
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================================================================ Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, the vast differences in spending habits is also why a universal sales tax makes no sense. The poor spend every penny they earn, while the wealthy put much of their income into savings. So a universal sales tax translates to those who can best afford to pay taxes paying very little, while those who can least afford it are paying more than they can afford. So of course those who would impose a universal sales tax claim it is more fair, because “everyone pays the same rate.” No. They don’t. End of rant.
Glenn Kirschner – Former DOJ Official Jeffrey Clark to Plead the 5th Amendment for Crimes he Committed w/Donald Trump
Lincoln Project – Last Week in the Republican Party
Ring of Fire – Corporations Are Using Inflation As An Excuse To Jack Up Prices For Consumers
Represent Us – Why We Should Make Election Day a Holiday (Look, I’m not opposed to making Election Day a holiday. But I am violently opposed to the idea that doing so will solve all out electoral problems. Frankly, that strikes me as elitism and privilege at its ugliest. Making Election Da a holiday will not enfranchise low income workers paid hourly in call centers, retail establishments, and places like hospitals and prisons where some one must work, holiday or no holiday. In fact, it may further disenfranchise the poorest, who are desparate to cover minimum expenses – time and a half or double time are a great incentive not to vote. Unless we also make voting by mail, no reason required, nationally available, safe, and dependable, and continue to support early voting and making more places available to vote, all the holidays on the world are not going to enfranchise the people who need it the most.)
Liberal Redneck – Liberal Redneck – SCOTUS and the “Pro-Life” Crowd
Ring of Fire – MyPillow CEO Says He’s Found People 850 Years Old Who Voted In 2020 Election
Robert Reich has emailed a free link to his documentary “Inequality for All.” It’s over an hour and a half, but apparently it’s normally PPV (and actually have times when I want to turn off hte rdio for an hour or more and want something else to listen to or watch.) Here it is if anyone wants to save it. https://tubitv.com/movies/587315/inequality-for-all
MSNBC – Republican Threat To Wisconsin Elections No Laughing Matter
Puppet Regime – COVID Family Reputation on the Brink
Unlike the “Really American” videos (which i am not dissing – they are just different), you can tell Glenn Kirschner is angry on his own show by what he says – calmly.
Lawrence takes a song to discuss immigration and land ownership … and opens up a real can of worms (including some whoopass for the GOP.) Brilliant.
It’s a tired/painful day here in the CatBox. Yesterday, WWWendy and I got all our chores done. I feel very tired. Tomorrow, I expect to be be back in the saddle again. Oh God, it’s Monday!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:13 (average 5:11). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Short Takes:
From The New Yorker: Donald J. Trump will act as his own defense attorney at his impeachment trial after receiving a law degree from Trump University.
Trump bestowed the degree upon himself in his capacity as the dean of the Trump University School of Law, where he graduated first in his class.
In his first official statement as the lead attorney of his defense team, Trump vowed not to quit the team “like those other losers.”
Andy, what a wonderful idea! Trump** will get the quality of representation he deserves! RESIST the Republican Reich!!
From Crooks and Liars: Tucker Carlson rants about anyone in the media that has dared to call out Fox for it’s dangerous rhetoric egging on white supremacists, and attacks AOC as a “tool of corporate power” for saying there are white supremacist sympathizers in Congress.
Barf Bag Alert!!
AOC is a tool of corporate power. The Pope is Jewish. And bears never, ever shit in the woods! RESIST the Republican Reich!!
From Daily Kos: A counterproposal by ten supposedly “moderate” Republican senators that would reduce COVID-19 pandemic emergency funding to a fraction of what’s being proposed by Democrats is landing with a wet thud today, despite the ten Republicans framing their effort around alleged “bipartisan” cooperation. That’s not a surprise; it’s difficult to believe the proposal, led by the perpetually concerned Sen. Susan Collins and including Sens. Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Bill Cassidy, Thom Tillis, and Rob Portman, was meant as genuine proposal. And Democrats, to their credit, seem appropriately skeptical about its earnestness.
The proposal sketched out by the ten Republicans in a letter to President Joe Biden on Sunday is most notable for its slashing of proposed pandemic funding. Biden and Democrats are moving towards a $1.9 trillion plan; the Republican senators are instead proposing just $600 billion, less than a third of that amount. It would reduce proposed survival checks from $1400 to $1000, and cut them off for Americans earning over $50,000 a year or families earning $100,000.
It also cuts school pandemic funding, with Bill Cassidy telling Fox News Sunday that the “real problem” is not ongoing pandemic dangers but “teachers’ unions telling their teachers not to go to work.”
The ten Republicans are attempting to sell the fractional measure as bipartisanship, and major news outlets are predictably gobbling those claims, with The Washington Post musing that “the GOP offer presents a challenge for Biden, who campaigned on promises to unify Congress and the country” and Reuters framing the measure and its supporters with the much-cherished “moderate” label. (It should go without saying that the nine of ten Republican senators who voted to nullify consequences for Trump attempting to extort a foreign leader for personal gain cannot be sensibly called “moderate.”) Of special note, the Republicans are framing their proposal as a way to dodge the partisanship of Democrats passing the Biden-backed proposal using reconciliation rules, rather than caving to Republican filibuster.
Well, you know what Republicans mean when they say “bipartisan”.
RESIST the Republican Reich!!
From YouTube (a blast from the past): New Kid in Town (2013 Remaster)
