Heather Cox Richardson writes about the recent Moms for Liberty convention in Philadelphia, which drew the leading Republican presidential candidates. An unusual feat for an organization founded only two years ago. By contrast, she says, there is a forward movement across the nation, spurred by Biden’s successful economic policies. Will the public fall for fear or vote for progress? To read the footnotes, open the link.
She writes:
For more than a week now, I have intended to write a deep dive into the right-wing Moms for Liberty group that held their “Joyful Warriors National Summit” in Philadelphia last week, only to have one thing or another that seemed more important push it off another day. This morning it hit me that maybe that’s the story: that the reactionary right that has taken so much of our oxygen for the past year is losing ground to the country’s new forward movement.
Today the jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics pushed ahead of them by showing that the U.S. economy added 209,000 jobs in June. The rate of job growth is slowing but still strong, although the economy showed that the Black unemployment rate, which had been at an all-time low, climbed from 4.7% to 6%. Since Black workers historically are the first to lose their jobs, this is likely a signal that the job market is cooling, which should continue to slow inflation.
In the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin called out the media outlets so focused on the idea that Biden would mismanage the economy and that recession was imminent that they have ignored “29 consecutive months of job growth, inflation steadily declining, durable goods having been up for three consecutive months, 35,000 new infrastructure projects, an extended period in which real wages exceeded inflation and outsize gains for lower wage-earners.” As reporters focused on the horse-race aspect of politics and how voters “felt” about issues, she noted, “[w]e have seen far too little coverage of the economic transformation in little towns, rural areas and aging metro centers brought about by new investment in plants, infrastructure projects and green energy related to the Chips Act.”
Also of note is that today is Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s first day of talks with top Chinese officials in Beijing, where she will also talk to U.S. business leaders. At stake is the Biden administration’s focus on U.S. national security, which includes both limiting China’s access to U.S. technology that has military applications and bringing supply chains home. China interprets these new limitations as an attempt to hurt its economy. Yellen is in Beijing to emphasize that the U.S. hopes to maintain healthy trade with China but, she told Chinese Premier Li Qiang, “The United States will, in certain circumstances, need to pursue targeted actions to protect its national security.”
Meanwhile, China’s faltering economy has led to new rules that exclude foreign companies, leading U.S. businesses to reconsider investments there. Chinese leaders have tried to reassure foreign business leaders that they are welcome in China, while Yellen told U.S business leaders: “I have made clear that the United States does not seek a wholesale separation of our economies. We seek to diversify, not to decouple. A decoupling of the world’s two largest economies would be destabilizing for the global economy, and it would be virtually impossible to undertake.”
The success of Biden’s policies both at home and abroad has pushed the Republican Party into an existential crisis, and that’s where Moms for Liberty fits in. Since the years of the Reagan administration, the Movement Conservatives who wanted to destroy the New Deal state recognized that they only way they could win voters to slash taxes for the wealthy and cut back popular social problems was by whipping up social issues to convince voters that Black Americans, or people of color, or feminists, wanted a handout from the government, undermining America by ushering in “socialism.” The forty years from 1981 to 2021 moved wealth upward dramatically and hollowed out the middle class, creating a disaffected population ripe for an authoritarian figure who promised to return that population to upward mobility by taking revenge on those they now saw as their enemies.
In the past two years, according to a recent working paper by economists David Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrew, Biden’s policies have wiped out a quarter of the inequality built in the previous forty. And at the same time that Biden’s resurrection of the liberal consensus of the years from 1933 to 1980 is illustrating that the economic problems in the country were the fault of Republican policies rather than of marginalized people, the extremism of those angry Republican footsoldiers is revealing that they are not the centrist Americans they have claimed to be.
Moms for Liberty, which bills itself as a group protecting children, organized in 2021 to protest mask mandates in schools, then graduated on to crusade against the teaching of “critical race theory.” That, right there, was a giveaway because that panic was created by then-journalist Christopher Rufo, who has emerged as a leader of the U.S. attack on democracy.
Rufo embraces the illiberal democracy, or Christian democracy, of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, saying: “It’s time to clean house in America: remove the attorney general, lay siege to the universities, abolish the teachers’ unions, and overturn the school boards.” Radical right activists like Rufo believe they must capture the central institutions of the U.S. and get rid of the tenets of democracy—individual rights, academic freedom, free markets, separation of church and state, equality before the law—in order to save the country.
Because those central democratic values are taught in schools, the far right has focused on attacking schools from kindergartens to universities with the argument that they are places of “liberal indoctrination.” As a Moms for Liberty chapter in Indiana put on its first newspaper: “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.” While this quotation is often used by right-wing Christian groups to warn of what they claim liberal groups do, it is attributed to German dictator Adolf Hitler. Using it boomeranged on the Moms for Liberty group not least because it coincided with the popular “Shiny Happy People” documentary about the far-right religious Duggar family that showed the “grooming” and exploitation of children in that brand of evangelicalism.
Moms for Liberty have pushed for banning books that refer to any aspect of modern democracy they find objectionable, focusing primarily on those with LGBTQ+ content or embrace of minority rights. During the first half of the 2022–2023 school year, PEN America, which advocates for literature, found that 874 unique titles had been challenged, up 28% from the previous six months. The bans were mostly in Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina. A study by the Washington Post found that two thirds of book challenges came from individuals who filed 10 or more complaints, with the filers often affiliated with Moms for Liberty or similar groups. And in their quest to make education align with their ideology, the Moms for Liberty have joined forces with far-right extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, sovereign citizens groups, and so on, pushing them even further to the right.
Although the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled Moms for Liberty an “extremist group” that spreads “messages of anti-inclusion and hate,” the group appeared to offer to the Republican Party inroads into the all-important “suburban woman” vote, which party leaders interpret as white women (although in fact the 2020 census shows that suburbs are increasingly diverse—in 1990, about 20% of people living in the suburbs were people of color; in 2020 it was 45%).
When Moms for Liberty convened in Philadelphia last week, five candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, including Trump, showed up. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley told them: “When they mentioned that this was a terrorist organization, I said, ‘Well then, count me as a mom for liberty because that’s what I am.”
But here’s the crisis for the Republican Party: Leaders who wanted tax cuts and cuts to social programs relied on courting voters with cultural issues, suggesting that their coalition was protecting the United States from radicalism.
But the Republican embrace of Moms for Liberty illustrates dramatically and to a wide audience how radical the party itself has become, threatening to turn away all but its extremist base. A strong majority of Americans oppose book banning: about two thirds of the general population and even 51% of Republicans oppose it, recognizing that it echoes the rise of authoritarians.
As historian Nicole Hemmer points out today for CNN, Moms for Liberty are indeed a new version of “a broader and longstanding reactionary movement centered on restoring traditional hierarchies of race, gender and sexuality” that in the U.S. included the women of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and segregationists who organized as “Restore Our Alienated Rights” (ROAR) in the 1970s. Hemmer observes: “The book bans, the curricula battles, the efforts to fire teachers and disrupt school board meetings—little here is new.”
In the past, a democratic coalition has come together to reject such extremism. If it does so again, the Republican marriage of elites to street fighters will crumble, leaving room for the country to rebuild the relationship between citizens and the government. When a similar realignment happened in the 1930s under Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Republican Party had little choice but to follow.
Moms for Liberty = Proud Boys = fascist extremism = end of American democratic/republican governing
Also, “the reactionary right that has taken so much of our oxygen” not just for the past year, but since 1980.
https://neshobademocrat.com/stories/ronald-reagans-1980-neshoba-county-fair-speech,49123
I would go back a bit further perhaps 64 or 68. By 68 they thought it was fine to collude with foriegn powers to win an election. By 72 they thought it was fine to break into an opponents headquarters.
I wish some energetic Moms would start a group called Moms for Democracy
Shouldn’t those be plain, regular moms?
Who’s going to fund Moms for Democracy to the tune of many millions of dollars?
“Biden’s policies have wiped out a quarter of the inequality built in the previous forty.”
On the face of it, that is statement is a bunch of horse manure.
“Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley told them: ‘When they mentioned that this was a terrorist organization, I said, ‘Well then, count me as a mom for liberty because that’s what I am.’”
When she tells you who she is, believe her.
Duane Edward Swacker and All Besides that, I want them to tell me which real mom’s on the so-called left are NOT for liberty.
Even the Moms for Liberty name is a scam set up to imply and drive in false divisions among us. They would be more honest to say “Moms for Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, fascism, etc.” But “liberty”? Come on, give me a great big break. It’s SO CRINGEWORTHY and “out of the fascist playbook” as to be laughable, if it weren’t so serious a threat.
BTW Duane and All Below are snips from another piece written recently by an attendee at the recent MFL conference. The writer is also reviewing a book by Jeff Sharlet: The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, which the writer says describes the author’s visit in 2020 to the church of pastor Hank Kunneman . . . of Lord of Hosts Church in Omaha, Nebraska. The “punch in the face” idea I thought was most interesting:
“At a Trump rally in 2016, Sharlet” (the book’s author) “mixed in with a crowd aching to punch a liberal protester. The joy of punching, real or imagined, is the ideal of action, an inner feeling made incarnate, Sharlet writes. He quotes a rallygoer:”
“‘[Trump] stands up there and says what we all think…. We all want to punch somebody in the face, and he says it for us.’ Sharlet’s reporting suggests that today’s American fascism is grounded largely in this sort of feeling, in a kind of Pentecostal Spirit. Gun legislation in GOP states does not in fact establish militias or give aggrieved incels explicit permission to shoot up schools and other public places. And yet, those who point to legislative failures and economic inequality neglect the power of Spirit to, say, besiege the Capitol and interrupt the certification of electoral college votes.'”
“Here’s Donald Trump riffing at a rally in Tulsa in June 2020:
‘Hey, it’s 1:00 o’clock in the morning and a very tough, I’ve used the word on occasion, hombre, a very tough hombre is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away as a traveling salesman or whatever he may do. And you call 911 and they say, “I’m sorry, this number’s no longer working.” By the way, you have many cases like that, many, many, many. Whether it’s a young woman, an old woman, a young man or an old man and you’re sleeping. So what are you going to do, right?‘”
ALL: Here are some further quotes from the article about Potts’ recent visit to MFL conference (all quoted below). The irony of this coming from Commonweal, a progressive Catholic magazine will be “obvious” to those who haven’t read their many articles about the divisive internal disputes going on in the Church. By juxtaposition, this article reveals many differences between the right wing Catholic and right-wing protestant intrusions into democracy and the general thread of oligarchic power that runs through both. CBK (see link below/they offer five free readings of their articles)
“Fundamentally Fascist/A journalist’s bleak tour of the Evangelical Far Right
By Randy R. Potts/July 8, 2023
“Whether or not Pastor Hank understands as much, his denunciation of President Biden’s legitimacy in office is connected to a 100-year-old yawp from the throats of rich old white men hating on another president who supported labor, FDR.
“The on-the-ground shock troops like Pastor Hank and his ‘60,000 connections’ may look like just another entry in a long line of angry Americans hating their government. But The Undertow suggests that two things separate the current movement from past iterations: guns and proximity to power. Not just the gun slung seductively across Congresswoman Boebert’s backside in photoshoots at her now-closed Colorado restaurant, Shooters (which Sharlet visited and was forced out of by a gun-toting manager), nor just Boebert’s vocal support in the halls of Congress for thousands of insurrectionists (‘Madame Speaker! I have constituents outside this building right now!’), nor just the hired guns in church or the 393 million privately owned guns in this country. More specifically, what’s new are the guns in the hands of a people being trained to set their sights on liberals and the various seats of our liberal, democratic government.
“What detractors of the fascism thesis miss is that Trump and his fellow travelers are not like Baptists attempting to establish a new legal regime. Sharlet often points out that if Trump is an Evangelical, he is a Pentecostal, specifically an early Pentecostal: the race-mixing, tongues-speaking, feelings-based movement that caught fire in early twentieth-century Los Angeles and was only later tamed by much whiter organizations like the Assemblies of God. Neither Trump nor the remade MAGA Republican Party are concerned with the particular laws of this country. In the fascist state they imagine, the leader is the law. Alpha and omega. Legislation is incidental.”
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/sharlet-trump-evangelicals-fascism-january-sixth-GOP?utm_source=Main+Reader+List&utm_campaign=038e28882d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_03_16_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_407bf353a2-038e28882d-92562883
CBK,
I have no idea what you are getting at not only with “Duane Edward Swacker and All” but with what you have written. My comment has two parts-the first being the falsehood of the statement I highlighted and the second being that Haley is telling us that she is a reactionary xtian theofascist and we should believe her.
Help me to understand what you are trying to say as I am confundido.
Duane Reminds me of Mark Twain saying that he’d have written his friend a shorter letter, but he didn’t have time. (And I think Twain actually stole that saying from some other writer, and was proud of it.)
First, however, I was saying that the “Mom’s for Liberty” title is so general as to be meaningless. It also sets up a pseudo-conflict between THESE Mom’s and other moms who might not think politically as they do and so, via innuendo, those other moms are not “for liberty.” As it turns out, after I posted, several others on this blog said the same thing using different words–great minds.
Second, your note reminded me of the content of the rest of my note which came from a recent (linked) article concerning the writer’s concrete rally experiences with right-wing protestant morons (your theo-fascists), and a book he was reviewing that concerns the same kinds of experiences. Your note was inspirational. CBK
Duane In moderation. CBK
Here’s the source of that stat, Duane:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w31010
From the abstract: “Rapid relative wage growth at the bottom of the distribution reduced the college
wage premium and counteracted approximately one-quarter of the four-decade increase in
aggregate 90-10 log wage inequality.”
The 90/10 ratio takes the ratio of the top 10% of incomes (Decile 10) to the lowest 10% of incomes (Decile 1). A 90/10 ratio of five means that the richest 10% of the population earn five times more than the poorest 10%.
Thanks for the link, Robert!
In a quick scan and review of the paper I don’t see anything that discusses “Biden’s policies”. I don’t see Biden mentioned at all. Perhaps what the authors’ claim are correct-I don’t know. . ., so to attribute that to Biden is false and misleading.
No, this is a matter of what happened in what years.
In general, you are right. One cannot attribute everything happening in an economy to a president. One of the first things I thought when The Idiot was elected was, great, our economy is on one of its cyclical upswings, and The Idiot will get the credit for it.
BTW Shame on the Museum of the American Revolution for renting themselves out to them without vetting them first.
Just another example of deceptive branding and marketing. The should have been candid and called themselves Moms Against Your Liberty, or Moms for Authoritarianism.
And, shame on the museum’s board for lacking reasonable demographic representation.
Anyone who thinks Biden’s economic policies have been successful must be awfully affluent and privileged. I’ve gotten nearly $30,000 in raises over the past two years, plus my kids are no longer in private school, plus I have a fixed-rate mortgage and we’re still struggling. I don’t know how people are making it on less, especially renters who are facing hundreds of dollars in increases every year (if not more often). Groceries have doubled. Gas prices have skyrocketed (which is fascinating how Biden is only responsible for decreases, not increases). Don’t even get me started on medical expenses.
The fact is that many, many people aren’t making it. There has been a dramatic rise in homelessness, as evidence by tent cities and constant homeless sweeps in every major city. The U.S. is the only country where medical debt is even a thing, and people can get completely wiped out within months on one injury or illness. Student loan payments re-start in a couple months. None of this is sustainable and, contrary to liberals’ opinions, Biden has done nothing to help anyone other than the “defense” (sic) industry.
Speaking of the “defense”(sic) industry, off topic, I admit, but what do you and Heather Cox Richardson think about sending cluster munitions to ukraine? Jen Psaki said it’s a war crime just 16 months ago. Is it still? Cluster munitions are still exploding and killing civilians to this day in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. How do you think that’s going to work out for those brave ukrainians you claim to support? Or is it only a war crime worth worrying about when Russia allegedly does it?
Anyone who thinks that it doesn’t matter whether a Republican or Democrat fills an open seat on the Supreme Court must not have gay or trans kids. Or care about voting rights or democracy.
Hard not to notice the hypocrisy of those who claim to care about human life who were cheering on Putin’s massive annihilation of Ukraine cities in the name of “fighting Nazis”.
Just imagine, if Putin didn’t feel empowered annihilating Ukraine cities and their children for the last year plus, knowing that there would always be Americans normalizing it and insisting that the US stay out and let him annihilate as many Ukraine civilians as he wants, the US would not have to send cluster bombs.
I want the war to be over. Do you? All it takes is for Putin to stop. Sending cluster bombs may not help deter Putin, but NOT sending cluster bombs and having people cheering on Putin for fighting Nazis didn’t work either.
Putin has been using cluster bombs since the Russian invasion started in February 2022.
“Yes, both the Ukrainians and the Russians have used cluster bombs since Moscow’s forces invaded in February 2022. More recently, Ukrainian forces have begun using Turkish-provided cluster munitions on the battlefield.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/07/europe/cluster-munitions-us-ukraine-aid-explainer-intl-hnk-ml/index.html
Anyway, I guess I’ll put you down as a yes for war crimes.
Ukraine has been using Soviet-era cluster bombs, but Russia has a far larger supply, according to today’s New York Times. Since you have repeatedly endorsed Russia’s numerous war crimes, including the kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children, you are not in a position to criticize others for what is acceptable to you—but only if Russia does it. In your ideal world, Russia’s invasion is understandable, but Ukraine’s effort to survive is criminal.
You only care about war crimes when Russia does it. Dubya Bush is still walking free after slaughtering at least a million people based on lies. Never once have I heard you call for his arrest on war crimes. GITMO is still open. I don’t hear you calling that a war crime. Only a handful of low level soldiers were ever held accountable for Abu Ghraib. Where’ your outrage about that? Obama bombed hospitals and weddings. War crimes? All those things and much, much more have been and continue to be done by your own government that represents you and yet crickets from you. Putin is not my president and I have no control over his government which does not represent me.
No, I am not going to denounce every war crime ever committed by the US or any other country. Russia committed a violation of the UN Charter in 2022 by invading a sovereign nation. It has committed hundreds of war crimes since then. I will not play your game. Putin will be in office for 36 years. Putin has crushed every dissident voice in Russia. Putin has imposed iron censorship. That’s now, in this time and place.
Diane,
But it’s okay because Putin is using cluster bombs to take over Ukraine to fight Nazis.
I am not in favor of giving Ukraine cluster bombs, but I am in favor of stopping Putin from using cluster bombs (and other attacks) on Ukraine and nothing so far has deterred Putin from doing it. It helps that he has useful idiots on the left to normalize the things he does and then profess to be outraged and blame the victims when after 18 months they finally use the same against him.
Ukraine has exercised remarkable restraint in not taking the war to Russia.
Lol. It’s not restraint. They know Russia would crush them like a bug.
BTW, how’s the counter-offensive going?
Dienne, it’s so disappointing to see an intelligent woman like you cheering for a Putin victory.
“gas prices have doubled”
Honestly, THAT tells you all you need to know about the hypocrisy of the left.
The way for Biden to bring down gas prices involves all the climate-harming actions you oppose. When he did that in the past, you were outraged.
Politics is about choices. Republicans and a few democracy-haters on the left who don’t have the integrity to admit they were wrong about the Supreme Court believe it is about scapegoating Democrats for not magically solving every problem.
Growing up is about realizing that there are no perfect outcomes where everyone gets exactly what they want, there is balancing and compromise. Some people live their entire lives angry because of what they didn’t get and never seeing what they did get. Some are the opposite.
There are people with real grievances. And then there are the privileged ones who threw African Americans under the bus in 2016, ranting about “identity politics” and belittling their primary choices and blaming Biden for not making gas less expensive.
Russia has been bombing civilian areas of cities with cluster munitions which, by their nature, are indiscriminate. On the battlefield, they are used to attack widely scattered and dug-in positions (in trenches, for example). In cities, they are used for one purpose only: to invoke terror. The decision to send these weapons to Ukraine was made in order to break the stalemate due to large numbers of dug-in Russian forces that are preventing Ukraine from making headway with its spring offensive. It’s a painfully difficult decision. These weapons are not even supposed to be on the table. But using them on the battlefield, as Ukraine has been doing, is a very different matter from using them against civilian targets, as Russia has been doing.
And it’s pretty absurd to blame on Biden the increase in gas prices resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden didn’t invade Ukraine. Putin did.
The oil and gas companies are making record profits. They are profiteering and somehow it’s Biden’s fault?
Great point, Diane
What Dienne says about the economic pressures on the working class and the poor in the US is true. The Biden administration has seen gains in many areas related to the welfare of these people–see, for example, the $35 cap on insulin prices, a major accomplishment that makes this drug essential for millions of people affordable. But the official federal stats about food prices are bullshit, and NOTHING has been done in most places about soaring rents. Tampa, where I live, saw 28 percent rent increases in 2022. 28 percent!!!!!
I agree with you that soaring rents in Tampa are outrageous, but I don’t understand how a US President can address that. I don’t think the Biden administration doesn’t care but there are so many problems and limits on their power.
Having lived in NYC for many decades, I also saw enormous rent increases that happened over the course of a year or two, but it never occurred to me that the US President was to blame, even when that president was Reagan or Bush (1 and 2).
I was a kid during the big inflation under Gerald Ford, and the only thing I recall was the WIN buttons that people wore (“Whip Inflation Now”) and comedians making huge fun of him. I’m sure that helped Jimmy Carter win the 1976 election. But still not sure if there was something Ford should have been doing that he didn’t do to combat inflation or not. Did Jimmy Carter do something to fix it?
I just tried to do a quick history read — did Richard Nixon have wage and price controls that Ford ended? Did Carter put price controls back?
t never occurred to me that the US President was to blame, even when that president was Reagan or Bush (1 and 2).
AGREED
Rents are going down Nationally since late 2022. in some places more than others. But why were rents rising in the first place. That too depends on the City you live in. NYC (other large Cities) saw a dramatic fall in rental prices in 2020 as those people who could, fled Covid INFECTIONS not Lock Downs . It drove the price of Housing on long Island through the roof. While Upper Middle and Middle income areas like the West Side of Manhattan were flooded with mattresses and furniture waiting for garbage pick up . Mean while my House gained over 200k in value as the phone rang incessantly from investors / investment firms looking to pay top dollar in cash the following morning. ( I am sure some of my neighbors sold and moved to Tampa. ) Young people living in apartments with several friends working from home no longer tied to in person employment also fled cities. Driving up rentals in smaller towns and cities.
Of course NYC has rent control laws that limit how much a landlord can increase rents on much of the rental housing. So rent decreases were masked in 2020 and early 2021. Landlords with no adjustment for falls in rental prices on future increases did not actually lower rents they gave signing bonuses of 2 and 3 months free rent off of their price
on 2019 leases.
Then as the city opened up rental vacancies in NYC started dropping and rental lease prices went up. With the added pressure of those that could afford it looking for more (in a shout out to Greg )lebensraum for their home offices. Adding to the rental increases as they got tired of using the kitchen table for the office. The San Francisco fed attributing much of the increase in rental price in 2021 and 2022 to that
factor .
But 65% to 69% of Americans own their own home. Add to that not every rental area saw rental increases in 2021-22.
2020 saw a steep drop in mortgage rates in 2022 and a record number of refinances as interest rates dropped to a Historical low of 2.9 % These Americans saw large increases in disposable income. Workers working from home saw huge increases in income not spent on Transportation, food from restaurants ,haircuts and dry cleaning bills.
The average car in America is 11 years old I have a 2017 and 18 vehicle with no intent to buy a new car .
There are fewer than 3 million new cars a year sold in the US yearly . 330 million Americans with 92% owning a car .
So this is not to say that some Americans are not hurting Blacks with a lower home ownership rate in particular .
But most Americans are not hurting. Unemployment is near record lows, the bottom quin-tile of wage earners doing better than inflation as wages for low wage service sector jobs far outpaced inflation .
Somebody is buying my neighbors houses (I wont move to a “s–t hole state” ). Record crowds at Airports of poor people being forced to see the Country and the World.
The data is not “fake news”. The fact that there is a UPS strike tells you a lot about the shortage of truckers ! the media hyped a year ago .
THIS TOO SHALL PASS team transitory had it right. Covid disruptions have dramatically affected the World economy. We did not need 10% unemployment (Larry the Putz Summers ) to bring down inflation and Biden policy saved us from a far worse fate . You need only look at the UK and EU.
If Donald Trump were President he would be shouting that this is greatest economy ever. Every elected Republican would be going on TV every 5 minutes to repeat that and the NY Times and Washington Post Headlines joining the WSJ and Fox would read “Morning in America” again,.
But Trump would also be berating the Fed Chair and Federal Reserve Board as he did in 18 and 19 for raising interest rates and trying to bring on a recession. He would have been right to do so as Corporate Greed is responsible for sticking prices (WSJ not EPI ). So why is putting more workers out of work the answer.
Joel, two years ago, I would buy cage free, free range eggs at $2.99 a carton. Yesterday, at my Winn-Dixie (not a high-end grocery like Whole Foods), a carton of eggs cost $7.99. I make my own butter from heavy cream. Two years ago, I could buy a quart of heavy cream for $2.79. Yesterday, a quart of it cost $6.99. My local store had rib-eye steaks a couple weeks ago priced at $27,00/lb. A ten-pound goose cost $87.99. My food costs for me and my son are easily twice what they were. I have owned a number of houses over the years. Now, I am an old guy and live in an apartment. My rent increases and food cost increases have far exceeded increases in Social Security. I’ve watched the food hikes here locally and have wondered where TF the feds get their rosy figures. NOT WHAT I AM SEEING. I wonder how people poorer than I can live at all.
x 2022 rates in 2020
My rent has DOUBLED in four years.
But you are right, Joel. Nationally, rents have have fallen recently.
South Florida’s cost of living rose nearly 10% in 2022, new US Bureau of Labor Statistics figures reveal, the highest increase by far in recent years at 9.9%. South Florida’s increase was far higher than the 6.5% rise across the nation.
The largest major increase in costs in South Florida was the so-called shelter index – the cost of one’s home. That expense rose 17.2% in the region, including 19.6% for renters and 17.3% for the owner’s equivalent of rent. Nationally, the shelter index increase was far smaller, 7.5%.
The DeSantis Miracle?
And Biden is blamed for what DeSantis does to south Florida!
IKR?
Bob Shepherd
The thing about economic statistics is that they represent averages and individual experiences may vary greatly from region to region and occupation to occupation.
In 1981 as the rest of the Nation saw the worst recession since the Great Depression with 10.3 % unemployment NYC experienced a Real Estate Boom as NYC replaced London as the Financial Capital of the World. My fellow Electricians after 4 years of double digit unemployment during the NYC fiscal crisis were again working as National Construction Workers flocked to NYC for employment . They enjoyed that recession tremendously in NYC .
Today as construction booms in most parts of the Country and we hear about shortages ,Union electricians in NYC have a 20% unemployment rate. That is mainly due to the shift in working from home that Covid accelerated. Commercial Real estate in Manhattan and most major vertical cities Worldwide is in a downward Tsunami. Some older Buildings selling for 50% of their value pre covid. AI. only promises to make this trend worse. So Cities or some of them will be in serious trouble. This Socialist here has answers but that is another story or should I say fantasy.
So it all varies but averages are averages and of course it means little if you are the one suffering.
Egglands best eggs selling for $1.99 a dozen in today’s circular. While ShopRite a mid range Unionized supermarket had 18 large white store brand eggs for 99 cents last week. 2 boxes should last me till the next sale.
Food Prices are starting to come down. Normal economic theory would say that people substitute when prices rise. For many products the pandemic knocked that on its ass.
Between shortages of packaging materials and trucking issues that was not an option. The Bird Flu not only affected eggs and Poultry. But for a while with no cheaper Chicken to substitute for Beef. It kept meat prices rising. All that is starting to resolve. Beef,Pork and Chicken prices dropping. Tyson foods taking a clobbering. Of course they did not complain when they padded profits earlier. And clobbering is relative to recent highs .
All of this had little to do with monetary or fiscal stimulus and a ton to do with disruptions. The Media hype on inflation was through the roof in the summer of 2021 and fall before most inflation really heated up . The Nations paper of record the NYT a major pusher of “fake news” the Picture on the front page and the headline leading consumers to believe that Gas was $6.99 a gallon (somewhere in the middle of the Pacific ), when the National average at the time was $3.25. As Neal Irwin an Economics writer for the Times pointed out . That was actually far cheaper than in the past with increased wages and millage compared to 2011-14 and 2007-8. But that was on page 2 of the Financial section not the Front Page of the paper.
The (average ) consumer for numerous reasons was flush with cash. Especially after spending little of it during the height of Covid. This put upward price pressures first on goods and then on services as people came out of hibernation.
But Corporate America knowing that people were expecting inflation due to all the media hype, was determined to give them what they expected. With that came record profits not seen since WW2 meanwhile by January 2022 wage increases which had been confined mostly to the lowest wage sectors started to fall by January 2022. And have fallen pretty much ever since. So much for a wage price spiral. It is not happening without Unions or Unions at 6% of the workforce. Only progressives like Warren and AOC confront Powell about why workers should pay the price for corporate greed twice. First at the Supermarket then on the Unemployment line.
But always one to attack DeScuzziest. Perhaps after we read about him and his wife in an underage sex scandal, we can ask why his lack of support for Climate mitigation is helping drive that Shelter Index through the roof in Floriduh The Cost of Homeowners insurance rising 40% this year is a major force driving the increases in the Florid-uh housing index
“Never once have I heard you call for his arrest on war crimes.”
I have written here many times that if there were any justice in the world, Shrub, Rice, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld would all have stood in the dock at the International Criminal Court charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Many times
Dienne
Yes the American People are struggling so bad that Record Numbers flooded airports last weekend being forced to go on vacations. Retail sales are up . Durable goods orders up 3 months in a row . Rents falling month after month since late 2022.
18 Large white eggs at the local supermarket 99cents. Its a killer !
Gas at $3.49 a gallon by me in NY is cheaper than the yearly National Average in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 when it was between $3.60 and $3.90 a gallon. Factoring in increased gas millage and wages the average commuter is spending far fewer hours at work to pay for gas than he did those 4 whole years.
Tell your Sob story walking. The price of Groceries has not doubled. It has gone up close to 20% . The high end estimate of consumer expenditures for home food is $1200 a month for a family of 4. That is $14,400 a year.Far more than the BLS figures (actually more than double ). Less 20% = $11,500 before 2021. So you have had a $30k increase in wages , have a fixed rate mortgage and are struggling.
I call B————–
As for the American people the bottom quin-tile of wage earners have seen wages that exceeded inflation for the first time in decades . While a massive shift to working from home has increased the disposable income of many better paid white collar workers . Commercial real estate in Manhattan (and other major Cities ) now has half its Pre Pandemic value. With only 60% of office workers at work on any given day While work from home was the driving force in rising Rental and Home Prices.
Life’s a bitch I think I will take my fixed income and go on another vacation .
Joel, someone is telling you that her family is struggling.
Flerp, for her to get $30,000 in raises in the last few years, her base had to be substantial. Struggling to do what?
Typical failing “wharaboutism”. Dump whatever munitions are necessary to expel the Russian invaders from a sovereign European nation or else Putin’s mendacity will metastasize. Fascists only respond to force.
What do you propose in aid for Ukraine as they continue to fight for their lives against an illegal, brutal invasion instigated by a tyrant?
It’s far easier for us who live far away to wring our hands and discuss ad infinitum the morality of using cluster bombs.
No compromise until Russia is driven out of every square millimeter of Ukraine, out of the Donbas and out of Crimea.
I would say there would not be a war in Ukraine had they remained the third largest Nuclear power in the world. We convinced them to remove those weapons and send them back to Moscow. With Guarantees for their safety.
Would Putin contemplate attacking Ukrainian Civilians if Ukraine could assure mutual destruction. Or The US and UK.
Politics is about balancing competing interests and making choices. Democrats make bad choices but progressives can influence those choices. Aside from a few outliers like Manchin and Sinema, most Democrats can be influenced because they aren’t making those choices because they hate every progressive achievement. But the Republican party has been completely taken over by the far right – those John Birchers who were marginalized and rejected by mainstream Republicans back when I was growing up are now the mainstream. Their goal is to destroy progressive achievements and do it through a power grab, not democracy.
And it’s affected all of our perceptions, where a right wing Chief Justice like Roberts is a “moderate” simply because he isn’t embracing the wholesale rejection of democracy in favor of some white Christian utopia that the founders supposedly enshrined in the Constitution.
Not sure the arc of the moral universe in this country bends toward justice anymore. The Supreme Court has insured it bends toward the rich and powerful. But had the 2016 election been different, it would have. Historians (if they still exist) will look back at that election as the watershed moment.
Moderate and centrist are the most ridiculous political “classifications” ever. Someone who breaks a political orthodoxy once suddenly becomes “a moderate voice.” Here’s some footage of their odd appeal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dl2L4v6ecM
Here’s how you end up, after moderates draw you in to their nonsense:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p56k6QCjJnc
GregB,
Brilliant! Also, love that movie! And the album. Now you’ve made me want to go back and listen to my favorite songs, which I am about to do!
“Moms for Liberty” is a misleading title.
“Fascist Moms for Subjugation” would be more correct.
Moms for Fascism.
Moms for Censorship and Book Banning.
And speaking of dumb extremism:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10231183200790541&set=a.1200477179262
It’s the heat, stupidity, humidity, guns, bugs, snakes, alligators, the Villages, the Tomahawk Chop, Miami drivers, and abused manatees. Not to mention the home of Bob. Other than that… 😉
Uh, yeah. Guess you’re right, Greg. It’s being the home of Bob does kinda make up for it all.
Greg,
You forgot the Burmese Pythons.
You obviously think by “snakes” I meant the local pols, especially in central Florida. Which, upon reflection is more accurate. I’m less suspicious of pythons.
How pleased I am to be included with the bugs and the Villages and the pythons. LOL.
Pythons bug the Villagers less than Bob. Him they would hunt.
True that
You left out our herds (the world’s largest) of feral teenagers and Scientologists. And you forgot to mention that our insects are special. There are the continuously copulating insects (love bugs) that appear in swarms and can lift a poolside recliner with a person in it to heights of 100 feet. Our palmetto bugs, which are like cockroaches but the size of Volkswagens. And our mosquitos, who war game their early evening raids on tourists: “Hmmm. So what do we give them today, ladies? Zika? Dengue fever? Chagas? Chikungunya? Encephalitis? Plain old malaria?” So prevalent are these and the cognitive decline resulting from with infection by them that Governor DeSantis received 59.4% of the vote in 2022.
For those who want to go but just can’t bring themselves to do it.
Always so impressed with Heather Cox Richardson’s posts. Extraordinarily well-informed and well thought out. And beautifully written. She is one of the smartest political observers alive today.
awwwwww worried about moms who fight for sexual books being removed, or transgender boys playing against real girls??? Worried about moms who care? So cute. Nobody cares about hunter bidens cocaine in white house, nobody cares about the 100 billion we gave ukraine to launder money. Nobody cares about inflation, energy costs insane. Trump and the moms of liberty are BAD!!!! WAHHHHHHHH cry me a river. All voted for the wosr president and vice in the history of this country.
Energy costs- does the Koch-funded ALEC have something to do with that? Check out Ohio’s biggest bribery scandal in history (energy firms), courtesy of the GOP. It was in the news last week.
Off topic, I thought you would appreciate this.
“Why do we see this paradox, with so many Catholics leading a predominantly Protestant ideological movement? In America, the religion of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin has, in its fundamentalist interpretation, taken a turn so unrelentingly hostile to intellectual activity that it has rejected much of the last century and a half of settled science. A fundamentalist evangelical intellectual is a walking contradiction, indeed a suspected subversive among his coreligionists. For details, behold the Southern Baptist Convention.
Under the circumstances, the conservative movement has been obliged to use Catholic ideologues as its public idea men (they are invariably men) and interpreters of the Constitution. Given that the Catholic tradition has always made a show of scholarly erudition, and that Jesuitical training has its advantages in the cut-and-thrust of debate, Catholic apologists have won the conservative idea war by default.”
Be nice and I will post the link to the latest piece from perhaps one of the most astute observers of the American Political Scene; having been “A Republican Operative Who Left the Cult”. (hint ) Or you can use your google Machine.
Thanks for the post. The Catholic church in the US, led by right wing bishops, make “Catholic intellectualism,” an oxymoron.
Linda I didn’t realize this was your post; but since I read it, let me offer a correction: “The Catholic church in the US, led by right wing bishops,” makes right-wing “Catholic intellectualism,” an oxymoron.
If my correction is not what you meant, and speaking of overreach, then my long-time experience with and study of the history of Catholic intellectualism tells me that, in this case, you don’t know what you are talking about.
I’ll go back to my habit of deleting your posts now before opening them. CBK
https://www.salon.com/2023/07/01/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-conservative-intellectual–only-apologists-for-right-wing-power/
Joel Thanks for the Salon piece by Mike Lofgren. He certainly turns over a lot of rocks. Among other trails of insights, reading about the historical movement of the three “cons,” I couldn’t help but see their different foci and relationships to the question: “What has happened to education in America over the last . . . say . . . 80 years?” Without some historical perspective, the different arguments are just a distorted mess.
About the theocon movement, the dropping-off points of specifically right-wing Catholicism, as distinct from more liberal movements in the Church, come in at phrases like this one: (there are several more)
For conservatives and “for all the affected tossing-about of references to Aristotle or Aquinas, the regurgitation Latin phrases like an English schoolboy at Eton, and the scholarly pose of the theologian, it is not opposed to the intransigent anti-intellectual stance of present-day conservatism as a whole — nor does it offer any meaningful critique of the Trump phenomenon.” (“One honorable exception is Peter Wehner, who served as a theocon speechwriter for three Republican presidents but has been witheringly critical of Trump.”)
I would call that dropping-off point arrogance, fear, and a low-level set of un-tempered desires; all rooted in a failure to understand or to accept the fundamental message of the Christian texts and life, regardless of their name; but also, the analogical unifying threads that run through all of the centuries-old religions and even as those threads tacitly inform the social, moral, and political meaning of the U.S. Constitution and our other founding documents.
In that sense, my take on it is that the greater “we” have been lost in an historical desert for a very long time indeed. A long but worthwhile read. CBK
Thanks for the link, Joel.
“Conservatives habitually retreat into mysticism.”
Lofgren’s 2nd to the last paragraph provides a great summary of what the American Catholic church’s politics mean i.e. attacks against a society that wants to advance.
Hunter’s cocaine. Ah. Wow. That’s quite the story you have there, Josh. You could sell that the Breitbart for a whole lotta money given that you doubtless have evidence for any such substantive charge. I suppose that you have the pictures or other documentary material to prove that THIS PACKAGE OF DRUG FOUND IN AN AREA VISITED BY TOURISTS belonged to Hunter. Otherwise, it would be unconscionable to attribute this to him, a false accusation.
Exodus 20:19
Deuteronomy 5:20
Now, let’s talk about voting for vice.
cx: to Breitbart, DRUGS
Actually, my local Sinclair station tried to tie Hunter Biden to the cocaine, but I doubt he would have used a side entrance of The White House. They spread their propaganda through misrepresentation, exaggeration, false equivalencies, telling one side of a story and good, old-fashioned lies and innuendos.
Of course it did. This is the latest bs Reich-wing meme.
Amy Schumer tweeted that she left cocaine in the White House visitors’ area. Mystery solved.
Haaaa!
Last time I visited the WH was in the 70s . I always wondered where I lost that bag of cocaine.
To think of it lying there in that cubby for all that time!!!
I’ll share a story that I can now look back upon with amusement.
Years ago, when I was sixteen and had a rock ‘n’ roll band, when I generally looked and acted the part of “hippie” I stuck a roach (that would be the butt-end of a joint, for those not familiar with the older terminology) into my wallet and promptly forgot about it.
Years later, I was working as a teacher, and my wallet fell apart. Fortunately, I had an old, spare wallet in a desk drawer, so I grabbed that.
Then, the next day, I was teaching, and to illustrate a point, I grabbed my wallet out of my pocket, and as I pulled it up to show the class, the butt end of a joint fell out of it and hit the floor. I saw this and immediately stepped on the thing and stood on it for the rest of the period, until the class had emptied out and I could retrieve it and throw it out.
A close call, that.
oil under trump 2.20, oil since Moron Biden 3,4, and 5 dollars a gallon. We have security for other countries and don’t charge. Trump stopped giving the most money to all the “pacs” around the world. Obama couldn’t figure it out he even said nobody with a magic wand could get the GDP and economy going.
Highest point in stock market under Trump: 32,000
Highest under Biden: 37,000
If not for the Bush tax cuts and their extensions—as well as the Trump tax cuts—revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, and the debt ratio (debt as a percentage of the economy) would be declining. Instead, these tax cuts have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession are excluded. Eventually, the tax cuts are projected to grow to more than 100 percent of the increase.
–Center for American Progress
After passing his big tax cut, Trump went to Mar-a-lago and told friends at dinner, “I just gave you guys [rich people] a BIG Christmas present.”
It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic that so many fools in the working class think that Trump is some sort of working class hero when everything he has done has hurt them.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=586928153610797&set=a.409197534717194
Diane Ravitch, the only reason that the economy seems to do better under democrats is due to democrats extracting wealth from red states to pay for the bad policies in blue states. Other than that, something that would be perfectly obvious if you read history, democrats have a racist history and democrats are the Party of the KKK, segregation and slavery.
Greg Hackley, you have it backwards. Blue states pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. Red states take more in benefits than they pay in taxes.
As a New Yorker, I’m tired of paying to support laggards in red states.
Me too!
More fake news no doubt.
https://digg.com/finance/link/states-most-dependent-on-the-federal-government-ranked-59CWzbWb10
Diane Ravitch, you are sadly disinformed. The blue states have siphoned wealth away from red states for decades and that is the only reason for red states being allegedly dirt poor.
Where TF did you get these crazy notions, Mr. Hackley? You have it exactly backward. EVERYONE WHO ACTUALLY KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT THIS SUBJECT KNOWS that blue states pay more in than they take back from the federal government and that it is precisely the opposite with the red states. Aie yie yie. Where do you hear such nonsense. And yes, if you go back to Lincoln, Republicans were progressive. BUT NOT TODAY. Exactly the opposite is true.
Drink the Kool Aid much? Wow. Your ignorance astounds!
His sentence structure is better than josh’s, but otherwise, he seems to be just as racist and stupid. But I repeat myself.
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads.
A question for Bob- what is the derivation of “joyful warriors?”
Does it have a connection to, “As Christians we are called to be joyful as we advance the kingdom?”
The “kingdom” is anti-woman and anti-gay. When M4($)L is added, it’s also anti-puiblic school and pro-Koch.
Those referred to in this article, including the MFers for Liberty, along with Chris Rufo himself, have just about expended all of their usefulness as human beings.
There is but little else that is so pathetic as to have no purpose any longer.
How do I find out if the Moms for Liberty have infiltrated Cour d’lene ID?
Specifically, a new private Christian school ” Waymaker.” It starts 2023 school year this next week. I am curious about the curriculum they are using.I want to support the school staff financially but not if my politics are different from theirs.