Reflections and Machinations

Emily Singer at Daily Kos:

Inflation once again spiked in June, with prices rising at an annualized 2.6%—a 0.3% rise from a month prior and the largest spike since February, the Commerce Department announced on Thursday. "No matter what horizon you're looking at, this is too high," Harvard economics professor Jason Furman wrote in a post on X. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis data, prices for imported goods saw the biggest spikes, with furnishings and durable household equipment up 1.3% last month—the biggest spike of any category of spending. "Yes we are starting to see signs of tariffs being passed onto consumers,” Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in a post on X, adding that, “there will be more to come..."  Indeed, a number of companies have announced that they are going to increase prices due to the tariffs, with the giant consumer goods company Procter & Gamble announcing on Monday that it plans to raise prices on popular household products such as Tide laundry detergent and Charmin toilet paper.

[...] Even worse for Americans is that Trump's deadline to raise tariffs even higher on imports from a number of other countries is set for Friday.  Trump said that the Aug. 1 deadline is firm, and that he will not chicken out and delay the increase as he’s done multiple times before, earning him the pejorative nickname TACO Don which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. Even worse is that the trade deals Trump has announced ahead of the deadline are terrible for Americans, and will almost certainly spike prices on everything from medications to cars.

Today, the federal minimum wage is 7.25 an hour. Roughly $15k a year if you work 40 hours a week every week. Today, the median home price is $410k and the average is $512k.

In 1960, making minimum wage, and saving every single cent you make (and disregarding taxation), it’d take 5 and a half years to save up enough to buy a house. In 2025, making federal minimum wage, and saving every single cent and disregarding taxation, it would take you 34 fucking years to have saved up enough to buy an average priced house, 27 years to buy a median priced one.

Source

Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON ― You can’t make it up, folks. Senate Republicans voted late Wednesday to confirm Joe Kent, a conspiracy theorist with alarming ties to white nationalists and far-right groups, to lead the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent was confirmed, 52-44. Every Republican but one, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, voted for him. Every Democrat present opposed him. A former CIA paramilitary officer and twice-failed congressional candidate backed by President Donald Trump, Kent has regularly aligned himself with far-right extremists.

During his campaign for a congressional seat in Washington state, Kent talked with white nationalist Nick Fuentes about helping him with his social media strategy. He gave an interview to Nazi sympathizer Greyson Arnold, who has a history of making racist and antisemitic statements, including describing Adolf Hitler as “a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand.” He has downplayed the extremism of the neofascist Proud Boys, whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. He lumped the Black Lives Matter movement in with “child trafficking rings and cartels,” saying they should face “federal terrorism charges.” Kent has also pushed dangerous conspiracy theories, including the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and “stolen” from Trump, and that the FBI was involved in carrying out the Jan. 6 insurrection. He also falsely claimed that the Secret Service was “in on” last year’s assassination attempt against Trump.

Another example of nickel and dimeing the working poor, formerly the middle class. Then we get to pay an extra 15% on anything imported from Europe, 50% more on anything from Brazil, an overall 10% more on all imports in Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

It’s cool though. We have less access to affordable healthcare, no help for working families, medical research is paused, they just eliminated the department that deals with human trafficking at the DOJ, electricity is estimated to increase in cost 200% in some areas with the termination of renewables while simultaneously poisoning the land and air with outdated, dirty forms of energy, the House of Representatives gets to have an extended recess in order to hide disgusting crimes the president did shielding them from the American people, and of course the most wealthy people in the country, on the planet even, will pay significantly less in their tax contributions into the country which produced their wealth, in the nations largest transfer of money, taking from the poor to give to the rich, while at the same time adding over $3 trillion to the national debt, so overall… Everything is great!

But if you even attempt to suggest this is wrong, you are the bad guy.

“Once inside, residents would not be allowed to leave.”