Posts Tagged ‘economy’

When I saw this video:

All I could do is nod my head.

The vast majority of the people I work with have Spanish as their first language. They came here a decade or more ago. I don’t know if they came legally or not at the time but many if not most are now American citizens and they are scared for their jobs, their managers are scared for their jobs and as a guy about to hit 61 who had planned to work till 70 I’m scared for my job.

Even with COVID four years ago we were not.

And let me note, we are scared for our jobs after our company closed two warehouses in our area and laid off every temp we had.

Without a turnaround of the economy I don’t see how we avoid either further layoffs or a reduction of our workweek to below 40 hours.

That the democrats are polling over 40% is beyond me and I would bet real money that a lot of the folks were I am are going to vote for Trump because they know who was in charge when they were able to make a living and who was not.

They don’t care about mean tweets they care about feeding their kids and virtue signaling stuff like this

doesn’t enter their radar.

The only reason why I have no idea who will win in November is:

  1. I don’t know that Biden will be the Dem standard bearer no matter what happens in the primary
  2. I don’t know if Trump can win beyond the margin of fraud or if the GOP is taking steps to prevent it

It Comes Down to a Loaf of Bread

Posted: February 1, 2024 by datechguy in Blame Biden Administration, economy
Tags: ,

Today after mass I hit Market Basket before heading home. There are two advantages to such a trip.

  1. You get a chance to buy the “manager’s special” meats usually discounted 10-20%
  2. The donuts at their bakery are not only cheap but very good

With money very tights you look for a bargain here and there so rather than going out I figured find a nice steak and cook at home and if you can get it at a discount because the sell by date is tomorrow, so much the better.

When you first go into the Market Basket that I frequent there is a section just before the butter that usually has various breads that are offered on special. It’s handy for people who don’t want to hit the bread aisle at the other end of the store. I happened to glance at it and noticed they had the Market Basket Canadian White, a bread that I buy regularly at that area and I stopped cold.

The bread was marked at 2 for $5.

I do the shopping regularly at the house. I’ve seen the bread prices fluctuate over the years. I’ve seen a loaf of Canadian White as high as 2 for $4 and I’ve seen it marked down as low as .99 to get it to move. Over the past few years the regular price has stood stead at $1.79 though occasionally I’ll see it at 2 for $3 and buy an extra loaf to freeze.

I have never seen it at $2.50 a loaf. That’s a full 25% markup from the normal “high” price for the product.

I’ve seen the inflation that has been murderous in the country for the last three years. I’ve seen it in the price of all kinds of things, but to see it in the price of something that’s a basic staple as a loaf of bread and realize what that does to the people (and to the taxpayer because they’re paying that extra price for all those groceries) puts just how bad the economy is in bright focus.

And the worst part about it is that none of this needed to happen. This decline was a choice by those who decided that it was imperative to make a change at the White House and damn the consequences.

To a lot of people making the decisions that have led to this, a loaf of bread is nothing, but multiply that loaf by tens of millions struggling to meet basic needs and you have a powder keg just waiting to go off.

A report out of Florida tells us that despite dire warnings from the left about “constitutional carry” adopted in Florida concerning violence the opposite effect has taken place:

Now, more than six months after the law’s adoption, evidence contradicts Democrats’ fearmongering that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry a loaded gun for self-defense would result in more “senseless tragedies.”

Since the legalization of constitutional carry in July 2023, Florida’s biggest cities saw a significant decrease in violent crimes, including shootings. In Jacksonville, murders and homicides dropped 6 percent in 2023 from the previous year.

Apparently in Florida the increased risk of getting shot by an armed citizen is no longer low enough to justify the reward of crime to many. Fortunately for criminals NYC doesn’t have said risk.


The move by Hertz to sell of 20,000 electric cars (just to Whom they will sell them to and how much on the dollar they will get we don’t know) illustrates something that drivers who jumped on the electric car bandwagon have been discovering to their regret. The risk of not having sufficient battery to get where you are going in the time allotted does not match the reward of the “efficiency” of an electric car.

And apparently it turns out that said “efficiency” has as much science behind it as the 6′ social distancing business:

When carmakers test gasoline-powered vehicles for compliance with the Transportation Department’s fuel-efficiency rules, they must use real values measured in a laboratory. By contrast, under an Energy Department rule, carmakers can arbitrarily multiply the efficiency of electric cars by 6.67. This means that although a 2022 Tesla Model Y tests at the equivalent of about 65 miles per gallon in a laboratory (roughly the same as a hybrid), it is counted as having an absurdly high compliance value of 430 mpg. That number has no basis in reality or law.

For exaggerating electric-car efficiency, the government rewards carmakers with compliance credits they can trade for cash. Economists estimate these credits could be worth billions: a vast cross-subsidy invented by bureaucrats and paid for by every person who buys a new gasoline-powered car.

If you ever wondered why carmakers were willing to take the risk of making cars people didn’t want to buy without the reward of actual buyers, now you know.


The times are a changing for the government COVID crowd who forced all kinds of rules upon us while censoring those who might speak out about risks.

One of those bits of censorship were hitting or de-platforming folks who theorized that COVID came from a lab leak in China. The whole Fauci team was big on going after such folks with the help of a compliant media.

One of that team doing the insisting was Dr. Francis Collins who had no problem calling such statements a “very destructive conspiracy” for years. But apparently the reward of such a stance disappears when one is asked about it under pains of perjury when testifying under oath:

In a significant U-turn, House Republicans who led the hearing revealed that Dr Collins, 73, told them that the lab leak hypothesis was not a conspiracy theory.

His answers were similar to those of Dr Fauci, who sat for a marathon 14 hours of questioning last week when he finally acknowledged that the lab leak theory — that Covid escaped from a Chinese biolab — should not have been so easily dismissed.


As we mentioned on Tuesday President Donald Trump decisively won the Iowa Caucus losing only a single county in the state (which by an odd coincidence ran out of party change forms giving democrats who had no caucus to attend a chance to influence the GOP results)

While I found the result interesting compared to 2016 given that Donald Trump now had a record as president vs speculation as to how he would govern. CNN cut away from his speech right away and MSNBC made it a point to not carry his victory speech at all.

“At this point in the evening the projected winner of the Iowa caucuses has just started giving his victory speech,” Maddow began, oddly avoiding Trump’s name. “We will keep an eye on that as it happens. We will let you know if there is any news made in that speech, if there is anything noteworthy, something substantive and important.”

I find this the most interesting thing of all because the small MSNBC audience is about as far left as they come yet even among such an audience they find the risk of such people hearing Donald Trump speaking live so great that they dare not allow him to challenge the narrative that they’ve been sold.

That’s really something.


Finally as Israel continues to discover more and more terror infrastructure in Gaza and continues to systematic take out both Hamas and the terror infrastructure pressure continues to rise among western allies of Hamas and Joe Biden in particular to hold Israel back before the destruction of Hamas becomes complete.

Hamas apparently did not foresee this result figuring they would be able to weather an Israeli response in their incredible terror tunnel network. (Frankly they should all go to an underdeveloped nation that needs miners as they certainly know about digging) which is odd because Hamas claims Jesus as a prophet and apparently didn’t take these words of Christ on risk and reward to heart:

Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.

Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.

Luke 14 28-32

Of course if Hamas actually followed Christ they would be taking the whole “love your enemies” business seriously and stop trying to slaughter Jews, but to Hamas et/al the risk of defeat, humiliation and the devastation and death of their people does not compare to the reward of slaughtered Jews.

(At least among those who do not have billions in cash and live far from Gaza that is).

Reality doesn’t care what anyone’s political agenda is.

Peter Ingemi

MSNBC Joe Scarborough on the economy:

Meanwhile at their parent company NBC:

Universal Music, NBC Layoffs Join Tech, Media 2024 Job Cuts. (via Instapundit)

Hey just because we’re cutting jobs and laying off people doesn’t mean that the economy isn’t the envy of the world. All you plebs who think otherwise just because your companies are laying off or closing warehouses that were booming in the Trump years just don’t see the big picture. Plenty of people are doing well, look at the NFL, they’re not trying to trim staff, oh wait…

While the NFL’s postseason is days away, it is layoffs, rather than playoffs, that are a principal concern within the league’s Park Avenue, Manhattan headquarters. Industry sources say that 200-plus tenured league employees across departments were emailed a voluntary buyout package Monday. When adding age and years of service, any employee with a total of 70 or above qualified for the package, sources said.

Among the benefits offered in the package: three weeks salary for every year served, plus bonuses. Employees have until late February to take the buyout, sources said. The Super Bowl is Feb. 11. 

I’ll give myself the last word: