The final registered roll call vote will be [available here], it’s not yet registered.   However, at almost midnight the House finally passed the previous $550 billion Senate infrastructure bill.

After a day of backbiting and internal debate among the far-left communist wing and the socialist wing inside the Democrat caucus, Nancy Pelosi was forced to bring the long delayed ordinary infrastructure bill to a vote.  13 republicans supported it.  The final vote was 228/206.

This bill has a long backstory {SEE HERE}, as it was originally going to be connected to a massive Build Back Better social spending bill demanded by the communists in the House.  However, after months of attempts to structure some way to get two bills out of the House, one of them insanely over-the-top with social spending, eventually the communists were forced to let the original Senate bill come up for a stand alone vote.

With the Democrats needing a win, any win, to show they are capable of doing something…. they put this bill to a vote.   The future of their communist social spending bill is unknown.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on the DC narrative shaping program hosted by swamp gatekeeper Chris Wallace.  Within the interview Buttigieg was questioned about why West Coast port backups are worse now than before the White House announced their solution to operate ports 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Buttigieg proclaimed the ports are being impacted by the pandemic, and ships stuck in China are the reason why ships are sitting off the coast of California.   Yeah, try to square that circular logic.  LOL.  The scale of incompetence, even in common sense politispeak, is off the charts.  The illogical statements by this guy are legendary; however, he outdid himself today.

Eventually Pete weaves his way through fourteen nonsensical catch phrases to get to a point where he proclaims nothing in the supply chain will start being more efficient until everyone is vaccinated.  And yes, it appears that he is so stuck in pretzel-speak, Buttigieg actually believes that.

All of that said, I wouldn’t post this for review if it wasn’t for the ‘hard-hitting‘ segment from Wallace that comes right after.  You just gotta watch (prompted):

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The southern border is in crisis, food inflation is skyrocketing, transportation and logistical supply chains are a mess because of emissions and regulation, store shelves are empty, gasoline is ridiculously expensive, the blue-collar working class is getting crushed, the vaccination mandate is wreaking havoc on jobs, airlines and employment for first responders, overall national anxiety is at a high point, the economy is in a free-fall and two-thirds of all Americans now say the administration is incompetent.  Along comes Chris Wallace with the hard-hitting question about what Pete and his husband are doing with their twins for Halloween.

Lets Go Brandon !

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When I first saw the headline about Joe Biden paying illegal aliens $450,000 per person in reparations, I thought it was a joke.  So I contacted a friend who works for DHS in Washington DC to check.  I just received independent confirmation this story is entirely legit.

The Justice Department, Health and Human Services and Dept of Homeland Security are in negotiations with representatives from the ACLU and lawyers representing illegal aliens to pay out $1,000,000 per family for the hardship they endured in crossing the border illegally in 2017 and 2018.   Approximately 1,000 families will each receive a million dollars giving the total settlement a taxpayer cost of around $1 billion or more.

WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is in talks to offer immigrant families that were separated during the Trump administration around $450,000 a person in compensation, according to people familiar with the matter, as several agencies work to resolve lawsuits filed on behalf of parents and children who say the government subjected them to lasting psychological trauma.

The U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services are considering payments that could amount to close to $1 million a family, though the final numbers could shift, the people familiar with the matter said. Most of the families that crossed the border illegally from Mexico to seek asylum in the U.S. included one parent and one child, the people said. Many families would likely get smaller payouts, depending on their circumstances, the people said.

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The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has released the first estimate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the third quarter (July, Aug, Sept). [DATA HERE]  The top line number of two percent GDP growth is significantly worse than most economists and financial pundits expected.

The second quarter GDP was 6.7%, so a slow down to 2% is very significant considering the economy should be rebounding and reopening after the COVID-19 impacts.  However, when we dig into the details [Table One] you will see how what is happening in your life is actually reflected in the data.   None of this should be a surprise, as the data is simply reflecting what is happening in your personal checkbook economics.

First, here’s the media jaw agape, with false explanations and justifications:

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The drop has nothing to do with the ‘delta variant’, and everything -EVERYTHING- to do with inflation and impacts from Joe Biden’s economic policies.

Let’s take a look at the details, and you will see how the national GDP is simply a reflection on what we are doing to survive the Biden economy.

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Taxing “unrealized capital gains” sounds like a catchy and obscure way to make wealthy people pay more in taxes, but it doesn’t work.  A government that moves in this direction ignores the reality that people are not static.  The process also involves “taxing wealth” which then becomes an arbitrary definition.

Unrealized capital gains are not income, they are simply increases in value.

If your home was worth $200,000 last year and $300,000 this year, you have an unrealized capital gain of $100k.   A 15% tax bill on that value increase means the homeowner would have to pay $15,000 to the IRS.

Joe Biden is proposing to pay for his multi-trillion expansion in debt through this type of tax upon billionaires.   Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted this was part of their thinking to help pay for the Biden budget last Sunday.  WATCH:

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Proposing a tax on money that does not exist is the peak of government.   Sure the proposal applies only to billionaires who have massive gains in their stock portfolios, but billionaires are not esoteric titles.  Billionaires are people who can, if needed, move their physical location and avoid any U.S. tax on their wealth.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the third quarter review of average weekly wages [Main Data Here].  The results of the year-over-year comparison should alarm everyone.  This is a very serious data point that likely means we are in a recession, it just has not been quantified yet.

By now, everyone knows the term “stagflation”, which means a stagnant economy and large inflation (price increases), the easiest comparison is Jimmy Carter economic program in the 1970’s.  However, let me assure you what this latest BLS release foretells is not that.  This is far more serious than stagflation.  I am not an alarmist, but I am encouraging everyone to take this economic data seriously.

In this graphic I have modified the spread sheet to focus attention on the part that really matters. [Original Data Table 2 Here]  What you are seeing here is a comparison of weekly wages for the third quarter (July, Aug, Sept) of this year, compared to the weekly average wages in 2020:

Weekly wages went up a sum total of seven bucks [$7/1,000 = 0.7%] year over year.  THAT is ridiculously low.  However, worse yet look at all the categories of workers who saw an actual decline in wages.   This is not a decline in wage value, this is an actual decline in net wages earned.  WAGES HAVE DROPPED !

This is not only saying wages are failing to keep up with inflation, that part is beyond obvious, the data shows actual declines in wages for full time workers.  This is far more concerning, check that…. this is four alarm fire – running around the neighborhood naked and panicked level concerning… when you take actual declines in wages and factor in the September inflation numbers [Main Data Here].

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Raw material foodstuff price contracts are expiring, and the new purchasing prices will be significantly higher than current.  As these contracts refresh, the new higher prices immediately enter the food supply chain.  CTH has been warning readers to stock up on non-perishable items as this next wave of food price increases is going to be much bigger than even the prior 8%/avg jumps; and there is absolutely no end in sight.

Also, as more large municipal regions (megalopolis metropolitan areas like New York City and Los Angeles) begin enforcing a vaccine passport to eat in restaurants, the demand for meals at home will remain high.  Supermarkets again will fill the void in the diet of consumers who choose to remain at home instead of eating out.

The current demand on retail food products is likely visible to you in the form of bare shelves and minimal inventory.

Grocery retailers operate on paper thin gross profit margins and rely on fast turns of multiple penny profit items to add up to net profit income.  Technology has helped modern grocery supply chains to be very thin.

An inventory shortage arises when demand on the retail grocery industry spikes – which is what we have seen with COVID impacts as alternative food options were forcibly closed or pressured to reduced capacity.

Conagra is one of the large food conglomerates with control over products from field to fork.  Recently, Conagra executives announced they expect food prices to climb even higher due to all of the aforementioned impacts, along with large price increases in fuel and energy.

Wall Street Journal […] Conagra said Thursday it expects gross inflation—which doesn’t take into account hedging—to be about 11% for fiscal 2022, versus its earlier estimate of 9%. The company plans to continue adjusting prices and cutting costs, and said its prices likely will rise 4% or more during the current fiscal year.

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Congressman Devin Nunes appears with Maria Bartiromo (Fox News and Council on Foreign Relations member) to discuss the recent indictment of Michael Sussmann, a Clinton lawyer who was identified as manipulating information to the FBI to fabricate an investigation against Clinton’s political opponent, Donald J Trump.

Nunes outlines how the indictment shows Hillary Clinton and crew fabricated the entire Trump-Russia narrative as an effort to smear Trump.  Many of those same political operatives are now in key positions within the Biden administration.

Additionally, as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Nunes discusses how the U.S. intelligence community is working against the interests of transparency toward the origin of the COVID-19 virus, and the purposeful expansion of the IRS as a mechanism to target the American electorate.  WATCH:

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This is not a surprise data-point for readers here.  However, it is good to see honest statements from corporate executives on what to expect with food inflation.

As noted by Kroger Chief Financial Officer Gary Millerchip in a call with financial media, we can expect to see even more rapid inflation in food prices overall in the next several months:

MSM – Cincinnati-based Kroger Co., which had $132 billion in sales last year, says inflation is running hotter than management previously anticipated and that expectations are now for prices to rise 2% to 3% over the second half of this year.

Kroger is “passing along higher cost to the customer where it makes sense to do so,” said CFO Gary Millerchip on the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Friday. (read more)

The reason for more inflation is not too difficult to understand.  Fresh foods show fast price increases immediately because they have almost no pre-existing inventory.  Fresh foods go from field to fork the fastest, and price increases show up immediately.  The same applies to restaurants.

However, processed foods and shelf stable foods have a deeper inventory, the turns on that inventory take longer, and as a consequence, it takes longer for the price increases to show up.  Millerchip is simply saying the total supply chain price increases are going to hit, and they are going to hit even harder than the last few months, as the new processed inventory carries a higher cost.

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The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) released the August review [DATA HERE] of producer prices for last month.  August rose 0.7% with cumulative results now showing an 8.3% increase in prices; the largest year-over-year jump in prices for final demand products in the history of tracking. The prior record was July with 7.8%.

Inflation is skyrocketing for consumer goods at all levels of production: Origination (commodity/raw material), Intermediate (Mfr/Wholesale) and Final products (retail).

In part, the extreme upward cost pressure from escalating fuel and energy costs are accumulating throughout the supply chain and surfacing in the prices of the finished products. We are all witnessing this in the prices at stores; especially in the quick turning products, like groceries (fast turn consumable goods), which reflect price increases the fastest.

Final demand prices moved up 0.7 percent in August, 1.0 percent in July and 1.0 percent in June. The year-over-year inflation rate on final demand products now stands at 8.3%.

MEDIA – […] “The data comes amid heightened inflation fears fed by supply chain issues, a shortage of various consumer and producer goods and heightened demand related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Federal Reserve officials expect inflationary pressures to ease through the year, but they have remained stubbornly persistent, with Friday’s numbers indicating that the trend likely will continue.

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