Monthly Archives: July, 2022

Consumer prices rose another 1.3% in June, contributing to a 9.1% spike over the past 12 months. It is the largest spike in 41 years.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) Wednesday, which showed June’s rise. In May, prices rose 1%.

“The increase was broad-based, with the indexes for gasoline, shelter, and food being the largest contributors,” BLS said. “The energy index rose 7.5 percent over the month and contributed nearly half of the all items increase, with the gasoline index rising 11.2 percent and the other major component indexes also rising. The food index rose 1.0 percent in June, as did the food at home index."

Gas prices hit record highs in June, topping an average price of $5 per gallon for regular gas before dipping down to its current average of $4.63 per gallon, according to AAA. Diesel gas also hit a record high in June, which experts say leads to an increase in costs for all kinds of products as the raw goods and finished products are shipped around the world.

“The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.7 percent in June, after increasing 0.6 percent in the preceding two months,” BLS said. “While almost all major component indexes increased over the month, the largest contributors were the indexes for shelter, used cars and trucks, medical care, motor vehicle insurance, and new vehicles. The indexes for motor vehicle repair, apparel, household furnishings and operations, and recreation also increased in June. Among the few major component indexes to decline in June were lodging away from home and airline fares.”

This latest data showed the most significant increase in four decades.

“The all items index increased 9.1 percent for the 12 months ending June, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending November 1981,” BLS said. “The all items less food and energy index rose 5.9 percent over the last 12 months. The energy index rose 41.6 percent over the last year, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending April 1980. The food index increased 10.4 percent for the 12-months ending June, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending February 1981.”

Food prices have been a major pain point for Americans as those prices have steadily risen in recent months.

“The food at home index rose 12.2 percent over the last 12 months, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending April 1979,” BLS said. “All six major grocery store food group indexes increased over the span, with five of the six rising more than 10 percent. The index for other food at home increased the most, rising 14.4 percent, with the index for butter and margarine increasing 26.3 percent. The remaining groups saw increases ranging from 8.1 percent (fruits and vegetables) to 13.8 percent (cereals and bakery products). The index for food away from home rose 7.7 percent over the last year, the largest 12-month change since the period ending November 1981. The index for full service meals rose 8.9 percent over the last 12 months, and the index for limited service meals rose 7.4 percent over the last year.”

(The Center Square) – The people who manage Wisconsin’s elections are silent about the new ruling that bans ballot drop boxes.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission instead says it is waiting until after a Tuesday meeting to, perhaps, comment on the ruling then.

“The Wisconsin Elections Commission is currently reviewing the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling in Richard Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission. Commission Chairperson Don Millis has scheduled a full meeting of the Commission on Tuesday, July 12 to discuss the ruling ahead of the August Partisan Primary and November General Election,” the Commission said in a two sentence statement Friday. “The Commission may provide further comment at a later time.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court called out the Elections Commission in its ruling against ballot drop boxes, spelling out that Wisconsin law does not allow them and saying the Commission shouldn’t have either.

“Only the legislature may permit absentee voting via ballot drop boxes. WEC cannot. Ballot drop boxes appear nowhere in the detailed statutory system for absentee voting. WEC’s authorization of ballot drop boxes was unlawful,” Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote in the 4-3 decision. “We conclude WEC’s staff erred by authorizing a voting mechanism not authorized by law. The memos created a ballot drop box scheme entirely absent from Wisconsin’s election code.”

The Elections Commission offered “guidance” to local election managers in 2020 that said drop boxes could be used.

Commission members defended that guidance by saying the coronavirus required certain public health accommodations.

Justice Bradley said that the drop boxes went beyond the scope of state law and only helped to sow distrust in the 2020 election results.

“If elections are conducted outside of the law, the people have not conferred their consent on the government. Such elections are unlawful and their results are illegitimate,” Bradley wrote.

“The Wisconsin voters, and all lawful voters, are injured when the institution charged with administering Wisconsin elections does not follow the law, leaving the results in question.”

Many of Wisconsin’s local election managers say they stopped using drop boxes earlier this year when a Waukesha County judge declared them illegal.

Milwaukee and Milwaukee County’s election managers on Friday expressed their disappointment in the loss of drop boxes, but said they too will follow the Supreme Court ruling for the upcoming elections in August and November.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday touted a federal program to delay insolvency for private unions’ pension funds, but critics say taxpayer dollars should not be used to “bail out” pensions negotiated by unions.

Biden spoke in Cleveland, Ohio, about the American Rescue Plan’s Special Financial Assistance program, which will protect more than 10 million Americans in multi-employer plans from seeing their benefits slashed when their plan becomes insolvent, which many are projected to do in the next few years.

Biden called the plan "historic."

“This was $90 billion, O.K.?” Biden said in his remarks. "But it is small in comparison to the bailouts of businesses and major corporations and banks..."

Multi-employer pensions are those negotiated across an entire industry, like mining or construction, with private unions and employers running the plans. The Biden administration announced a final rule this week regarding the rates of return and kinds of investments these pensions can utilize.

“The backbone of the country are the working women and men, the middle class, and you know there’s a middle class for one reason: American unions,” Biden said.

Critics, though, say it will be regular Americans who foot the bill.

“[Biden] is saving private union pensions by making ordinary Americans pay for them,” said Rachel Greszler, an expert at the Heritage Foundation. “And 6% of private sector workers are unionized so many of the blue collar workers that aren’t part of a union, or maybe they are part of a union that no longer has a pension plan, they are the ones who are going to bear the burden.”

Democrats praised Biden’s decision, saying it will help millions of Americans keep their benefits.

“Today’s action by the Biden-Harris Administration establishes the final rules for the multi-employer pension rescue program that will protect millions of Americans’ retirement security and save tens of thousands of businesses,” said U.S. Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, D-Va., who chairs the House Committee on Education and Labor. “For years, workers, retirees, businesses, and taxpayers sought a solution to the multi-employer pension crisis. In response, Congressional Democrats delivered a historic victory through the American Rescue Plan that keeps the promises made to retirees, saves businesses from going under, and shields taxpayers from the even greater cost of a multi-employer pension collapse.”

When some employers who originally were in the pension negotiations went out of business, their unfunded pension liabilities remained and were absorbed by other employers, worsening the problem.

“[Unions] have consistently promised more than they have set aside to pay,” Greszler said. “The incentives are all wrong here because the union can say to their members, ‘see we got you a higher pension benefit. We weren’t able to get you increased wages, but we were able to get you the pension benefit,’ and they can tell the employer, ‘we know you can’t afford higher wages, and we are not going to have you contribute more to the pension. We are just going to tweak our interest rate assumptions so that we can promise more but you don’t have to pay anything more.’

“So that’s the problem, that historically they have assumed very high rates of return like 8% where all financial economists will say if you have a guaranteed benefit like a pension, you should be using a riskless rate of return or at best a conservative bond rate. … instead they used stock market rates that translate into being able to make good on your promises only 50% of the time, and when their returns fell short, plans consistently failed to make adjustments,” she said. “The promises were decades into the future, so they got away with it until recently when plans started failing and the entire system is on track to pay only 42 cents on the dollar in promised benefits.”

Critics also say the federal funds are a true bailout because the federal funds are not requiring any major reforms from the unions. The funds are also only enough to delay the insolvency of a fraction of the funds, critics say, and not fix the problem.

“It actually makes it worse because it creates incentives in the short term for plans to promise more and to make worse assumptions than they already were so they can qualify under this short window to get bailouts, and there are no consequences going forward,” Greszler said. “And now that the federal government established that we are going to bail out these plans, plan administrators know that the sooner their plans become insolvent, the higher the likelihood they have of getting that bailout.”