Cost Of Living

“Wicked” Star Ariana Grande Summarizes Damage Done By Trump Presidency After Eight Months

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The star of the “Wicked” movie series, Ariana Grande, has summarized the damage done by eight months of the Donald Trump Second Presidency.

What she had to say cannot be said much better than she did.

Has life improved because of:

Immigrants violently torn from their families?

Trans individuals being blamed for virtually everything and living in fear?

Free Speech being on the brink of collapse?

Have groceries become cheaper?

Have Health Insurance premiums gone down?

Has Work/Life balance improved?

Has Ability to take a vacation improved?

Is one happier?

Has widespread suffering for others benefited you?

Added to this list of questions she poses, this author and blogger adds:

Are the nation’s civil liberties, economic prowess, international leadership being preserved for future generations?

Is our government leadership in the hands of competent, decent, individuals or is corruption and malfeasance rampant?

Ten Days Away, Coming Back To New Controversies Surrounding Donald Trump! :(

Ronald 19 Comments

This author and blogger took a vacation, visiting my old “haunts” in New York City, where he lived until 1989.

While it was great getting back to “my origins”, for only the third time in the past 36 years, new controversies erupted around Donald Trump and his administration while I was away.

At least ten areas of crisis grew while this author and blogger was away on vacation.

The earlier decision of CBS to cancel Stephen Colbert, occurring days before this author and blogger took a break, just to gain the ability to merge with new ownership accepted by Donald Trump, was just the beginning. And Trump celebrating Colbert’s show ending next May was a moment of total disgust!

Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because she revealed a report of weak employment growth in July, and massive revision downward of May and June figures, numbers she had no control over adjusting.

Trump’s tariffs, which will raise the cost of living dramatically in future months, are due to take place on August 7, with some nations being “punished” more than others, including Canada and Brazil, and all Americans paying the price for this insanity, as tariffs cause economic collapses historically!

Ghislane Maxwell, in prison for 20 years for sexual abuse of young girls, connected with the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal, was moved to a minimum security prison, after being interviewed by Trump’s Deputy Attorney General. This is seen as an attempt to move to pardon her, and avoid revelations of whether Donald Trump was involved in the sexual abuse, another sign of a coverup to protect Trump.

Texas is attempting to use the abuses of gerrymandering to insure possibly five more House seats to go to the Republican Party, an effort to insure Republican control of the House of Representatives, with the support of Donald Trump. Democrats have left the state, to try to avoid such abuses from occurring.

The National Museum of American History, connected with the Smithsonian Institution, temporarly removed an exhibit showing Trump’s two impeachments, although it now claims it will be restored in the future.

The number of ICE arrests is multiplying, including at immigration hearings, when people show up at their required appointments, gain a new court date, but then are grabbed by multiple ICE agents wearing masks, acting like the Nazi Gestapo!

The number of government workers are being decimated, which makes a future set of shortcomings that will affect Americans in many areas of government involvement, most notably the National Weather Serivce and the upcoming hurricane season, as well as air traffic control, which delayed this author and blogger’s flight to New York City by a TEN hour delay! 🙁

Trump has moved nuclear submarines closer to Russia, as relations between Trump and Vladimir Putin worsen, and as the Russian war against Ukraine continues unabated.

The mass starvation of Gaza residents by Israel continues, and Trump’s inability or lack of concern about what is seen by many as a growing Holocaust.

So trying to “escape” from the news really is not truly possible, as the nightmare of Donald Trump continues! 🙁

Donald Trump’s Insane Tariff Policy: An Economic Disaster If Ever Enacted!

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Donald Trump is proposing massive tariffs on foreign nations and their goods, particularly China, without realizing such a policy is a true economic disaster!

History tells us high protective tariffs, as for instance under President Herbert Hoover nearly a century ago, with the Smoot Hawley Tariff of 1930, helped make an economic downturn escalate into a full scale Great Depression!

Back then, hundreds of economists took out an ad in the NY TIMES, pleading with Hoover to veto such action, but he paid no attention, and it caused his demise to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Presidential Election Of 1932.

What Trump clearly does not understand is that it is middle class and working class Americans who will suffer the most, as prices of all kinds of imported goods will rise 20 percent or more, adding massively to the cost of living.

Trump is ignorant on economics, along with many other areas of knowledge and policy, and were he elected and able to accomplish his crazy economic ideas, it could lead to another Great Depression!

So the Presidential Election of 2024 is crucial on economic policy, as it is on so many other issues!

Time To Raise The Federal Minimum Wage To $15 In Stages By 2025!

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The last federal minimum wage increase occurred in 2009 during the first year of the Obama Presidency.

That minimum wage was $7.25, and yet, 12 years later, there are those who oppose an increase after more than a decade.

It is true that many states have a higher minimum wage, but it is more than past due to raise the federally mandated minimum wage in stages to $15 by 2025.

It is not as if there is a call for an immediate jump, but over four years, it is not too much to demand!

There are millions of low paid wage earners who cannot support themselves, and if the minimum wage had been based on the cost of living since its inception in 1938 under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the minimum wage now would be $24!

So the Democrats need to push through this legislation, maybe separately from the COVID 19 Pandemic legislation, with or without much Republican support!

Los Angeles Minimum Wage To Go To $15 By 2020! Is This The Trend For The Nation?

Ronald 20 Comments

The issue of the minimum wage has been a controversial one for the past decade, with the unwillingness of Congress to raise the minimum wage, which used to be raised automatically, based on the “cost of living” until the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Ever since, even despite occasional increases under George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the argument has been that raising the minimum wage will cause more unemployment and raise prices for consumers dramatically.

But many say that is not the case, and that it is a situation of a basic human right, the ability to support oneself and one’s family, and that many of the people on the minimum wage are NOT young beginning workers, as claimed by critics, but rather people primarily of color who are single mothers with children.

Now Los Angeles has taken the bull by the horn, and mandated a $15 minimum wage in steps by the year 2020, and a few other localities, such as San Francisco and Seattle, have also raised the minimum wage, although not as high as Los Angeles.

There is a movement nationwide by fast food workers, and retail industry workers, to force an increase by demonstrations, with limited success at this time.

The fact is that IF the minimum wage was always based on the cost of living, the original minimum wage of 25 cents per hour in 1938 would not be about $22.00 an hour, so even what Los Angeles has mandated will happen, does not meet that standard.

President Obama has proposed a national minimum wage of $9 an hour, a small step forward.

It is clear that no worker, who works full time, should be expected to live in poverty, and if the rest of us must pay a higher price for goods and services, so be it!

The California Drought A Tragedy For The Nation!

Ronald 3 Comments

Climate change and global warming is becoming a crisis for America’s economic future, and particularly in California, where one out of every eight Americans reside.

The drought going on in California is historic, and it will affect agriculture directly, but also the entire economy not just of the Golden State, but of the nation at large.

Shortages of fruits and vegetables will dramatically raise the cost of living, and these are foods that are so important for the health of all human beings.

Jobs will be lost as the parched earth of California continues to multiply, and water supplies are rapidly dwindling, and water is a basic of all sustenance.

Santa Ana winds and generally high dry heat conditions otherwise lead to massive fires that destroy much of the forested areas and threaten homes and lives.

And while the center of attention is California, the same situation affects the western half of the nation, from the Midwest to the Great Plains to the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest.

There are no easy answers as to how to address this crisis, but political stalemate on the environment insures long range damage that will harm America, its economy, and long range well being!

Republican Senators And The Minimum Wage Law

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The Republican Party has effectively written off those workers who are paid the minimum wage, not caring about how they are to survive in an economy with the situation stacked against them.

It has been nearly a decade since the minimum wage was raised, and people forget that the minimum wage was never raised during the 1980’s, and so the cost of living is way beyond what the minimum wage should be.

Originally established at 25 cents an hour in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. the minimum wage should now be about $15 an hour based on inflation, but instead is, nationally at $7.25 an hour for nearly a decade, although some states have raised the limit.

The bill that failed to get to a vote in the Senate, due to the filibuster tactic, would have raised the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour in stages until 2016, but NOT one GOP Senator, not even Senator Susan Collins of Maine, or Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, or a few others thought to have some “moderate” tendencies, voted for the rise in the minimum wage.

Many of the minimum wage workers are breadwinners for their families, and the stress of having too little income also affects their physical and mental health, but obviously Republicans and conservatives do not give a damn about those realities!

Today’s minimum wage is 25 percent below what it was in 1968, an absolute atrocity! Putting extra money in the hands of the working poor would make life easier, add to business profits, and would certainly all be put back into the economy, but the Republicans are determined to punish the poor for being poor, and in so doing, harm children and women, even more than men.

If this is not the new “Gilded Age”, what is it, not only for the poor, but for the dwindling middle class?

This is Scrooge at its best!