I shot the photo above of then "Former VP Joe Biden" in Owingsville, Kentucky, in October of 2018, at a time when there was little hope for America. Thank God, he is now President Joe Biden and since January 20, 2021, hope has returned to America. But despite all that hope, this has still been a very mixed year of results. Yes, after 4 years of an ongoing attempt to destroy America, American Democracy, and many other of the most basic values enshrined in the US Constitution and laws, we have a competent, committed, honest, legally and duly elected President who his working on a daily basis to save this country from "enemies both foreign and domestic". We no longer have a TRAITOR living in the White House and I really wish that was all that is necessary to be said about that. But it is not! The same TRAITOR and his Right Wing Radical supporters are still attempting to subvert and destroy everything the Founding Fathers created. Covid 19, in all its mutations and manifestations, is still destroying the country and we are in the middle of what is likely to become the worst disease surge yet of this pandemic. Sadly, Covid 19 would not have been anywhere near as bad a disaster if the TREASNOUS occupant of the White House in 2020 had done anything productive in the first 3 months of 2020 to stop the pandemic and help the country avoid the 800,000 unnecessary deaths which have occurred since then. A worldwide shipping crisis is preventing much of commerce from happening, or at least form flowing normally, and an artificial inflation is beginning to make life hard, as inflation always does, on the lives of the lower classes.
But the thing you need to understand about that inflation is that it is artificial and primarily created by large corporations who are taking advantage of both the pandemic and the shipping crisis to artificially and unnecessarily raise prices on everything from corn flakes to cars. There are two new words which have come into the lexicon of economics which you should learn, remember, and fight against every day: Shrinkflation and Skimpflation. On October 26, 2021, the NPR's "Planet Money" described Skimpflation in this way: Skimpflation is "when, instead of simply raising prices, companies skimp on the goods and services they provide." Products are being produced in smaller packages and being sold at the same prices, or greater, as were being charged for the formerly larger packages. Quoting once again from the NPR article this is what is happening: "Domino's is taking longer to deliver pizzas. Airlines are putting customers who call them on hold for hours. Restaurants, bars and hotels are understaffed and stretched thin. The quality of service seems to be deteriorating everywhere." If there is a way for a major American corporation to cheat, chisel, connive, and rob the American citizen, they are doing it and blaming it on both the pandemic and the president. Don't buy their lies! "Business Insider" described Shrinkflation on July 18, 2021, in this way: "Shrinkflation describes brands selling smaller amounts of product for the same price as before." You should also avoid falling into the easy mental error of confusing the two terms. Skimpflation is a process which can affect both goods and services, along with their prices and delivery, all across the spectrum of business. It includes issues such as never having a human answer a phone call; slow delivery of products, goods, and services; putting one smaller bar of soap in a hotel room where two larger bars used to routinely be; changing and washing those hotel sheets only when the guest requests it; and putting less of a product in a package, any product, any package. Shrinkflation is more directly tied to amounts of product which are delivered and is accomplished by a variety of means ranging from small packages, larger prices for the same amounts, and accomplishing such feats in deceptive ways which hide the losses from the purchaser. If Shrinkflation and Skimpflation were the only ways every American was losing today, we would have a few things to be happy about.
The shipping crisis is real and greatly affects millions of different products which are now being made in foreign countries by or for American corporations who refuse to build those products in America while being required to pay employees a living wage. But the major players in that shipping crisis are not truly cooperating with each other to mutually improve the situation. The marine shipping companies are raising their prices to astronomical levels and blaming it on ports and their managers along with trucking companies, truck drivers, and their unions for those drivers who have the good sense and good fortune to belong to a union. The ports and their managers blame various aspects of the shipping industry including both marine shippers and trucking companies and their drivers. The facts of the matter are that our shipping ports are all outdated, poorly maintained, and the Right Wing Radical Repugnican Party is refusing to support President Biden in his effort to pass a major infrastructure bill which would provide money to repair, improve, and expand those ports, rail heads, roads, bridges, airports, hospitals, colleges and universities, and other major aspects of our economy. For at least thirty years, the situation has been growing steadily worse in terms of how these major hubs of transportation have been neglected, allowed to fall into disrepair, and never expanded when the market needed it. The shining example of how roads and bridges have been neglected is the Brent Spence Bridge which crosses the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Covington in my native Kentucky. That key American bridge which sits at a major juncture of several of the largest interstate highways has been in disrepair for many years and little beyond emergency maintenance has been provided for it. #MoscowMitch McConnell, the senate Republican leader who happens to be elected from Kentucky has even refused to support funding to repair this key bridge which serves his own state.
The United States Postal Service has also been under a direct attack by its putative head, Louis DeJoy, who was rewarded by being appointed as head of the USPS for having been a key bundler of campaign contributions to TRAITOR Trump and was given the mission of doing as much damage to the mail system as possible in what must be assumed to be an effort to lead congress to sell it off to some of their other co-conspirators. Luckily, President Biden has been able to gain a majority of appointees to the USPS governing board and it appears highly likely that DeJoy will soon be fired.
America, President Biden, and the proposed infrastructure package are all being held hostage by Senator Joe Manchin, who is nominally a member of the Democratic party but has consistently voted against efforts by the president and the Democratic party to repair the country. Sadly, Manchin is the only Democrat who can be assured of being elected in West Virginia which was once proudly and professionally represented by Democrats who gave their all to the service of the country incluing Senator Robert Byrd and Congressman Ken Hechler. Sadly, West Virginia and Kentucky politics are generally controlled and hamstrung by the same coal barons and the Republican party who, for a hundred years have worked to destroy both states.
But, I began this blog post with the words that this year hope has returned to America and that is true. But we must, as Americans, do more than hope. We must support President Biden in his efforts to save America and American Democracy from big business, the Republican party, and Russia which stole the 2016 election in order to install TRAITOR Trump in the White House. We must register more Democratic voters and turn them out to vote straight Democratic in every upcoming election in the country. We must work on a daily basis to ensure that the hope we now have is fully realized and America is saved from these multiple negative and destructive forces.
