Category: Economy

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The globalist climate agenda is more than a misguided but well-intentioned mistake. It is a monstrous crime against humanity, promulgated by some of the most dangerous people who have ever lived. It is a brazen lie for any of them to claim that we are dangerous if we do not think the world is coming to an end, are not promoting panic and fear, and wish to see citizens of all nations achieve prosperity.

The Globalist Climate Agenda is a Crime Against Humanity.

“This anti-sustainability backlash, this anti-woke backlash, is incredibly dangerous for the world.”
— Alan Jope, CEO, Unilever, speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative

It would not be an exaggeration to say this is probably one of the most inverted takes on what is “dangerous” in the history of civilization. Not because anyone is against the concept of sustainability, but because sustainability as defined by Alan Jope is incredibly unsustainable. If he gets his way, he will destroy the world.

Jope, Clinton, the infamous Karl Schwab who heads the World Economic Forum, the ESG movement informally headed by Larry Fink of BlackRock (with over $10 trillion in investments), and all the rest who champion today’s prevailing globalist climate agenda are coercing nearly 8 billion people into an era of poverty and servitude.

The primary target of the “sustainability” movement is fossil fuel, the burning of which allegedly is causing catastrophic climate change. Heedless of the fact that fossil fuel provides more than 80 percent of all energy consumed worldwide, banks, hedge funds and institutional investors throughout the Western world are using ESG criteria  (environment, social, governance), to deny the financing necessary to maintain or build new fossil fuel infrastructure.

It’s working. Pressure from governments, international NGOs, and global finance is now delivering unprecedented shifts in policies around the world, creating needless scarcity and turmoil. In just the last month, new emissions rules have triggered protests by farmers in the Netherlands, Canada, Spain, Italy, Poland, and elsewhere. Sri Lanka, in the process of earning a near perfect ESG score, lost its ability to feed its people. In the ensuing fury, the president was forced to flee the country. Undaunted, globalist climate activists are discouraging African nations from developing natural gas.

It should be easy to see the hidden agenda behind this repression. If you control energy and food, you control the world. The biggest multinational corporations on Earth are empowered by ESG mandates, because marginal or emerging competitors lack the financial resiliency to comply. From small independent private farmers and ranchers to small independent nations, once their ability to produce is broken, the big players pick up the pieces for pennies on the dollar. But that’s not what you read in the Washington Post.

In a blistering editorial published on September 18, under “The Post’s View,” the editors wrote “The World’s Ice is Melting: Humanity Must Prepare for the Consequences.” For at least 30 years, and with increasing frequency and intensity, it is not the weather that has become extreme, but rather these proclamations. We have now reached the point where every major institution in the Western world is bent on spreading this panic. Yet very little of it is justified by the facts.

To verify the credibility of the globalist climate agenda, should it have any, several hurdles have to be overcome. If global warming and extreme weather is definitely happening, then how serious is the problem, what is the cause of the problem, and what are rational solutions to the problem? To all four of these questions, serious debate is mostly absent from mainstream discourse. Skeptics are pariahs.

But if a skeptical response to any one of these four questions is accepted, the entire edifice of climate alarm collapses.

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Bill Gates push for DIGITAL ID with $1.27 billion donation to Agenda 2030 ”Global Goals”

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $1.27 billion commitment to advance ”Global Goals” which are the 17 goals outlined in the UN Agenda 2030.

As part of this, a ton of funding is going to push for global digital ID. Yes, you read that correctly. Global digital ID.

Remember when that was called a crazy conspiracy theory?

A whopping $200 million will be spent to ”expand global Digital Public Infrastructure” according to their website.

They say that this funding will be used to help countries with among other things public health threats, pandemic recovery and of course climate change. What exactly is this ”global Digital Public Infrastructure” you may ask?

Well let the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation tell you! It means payment systems and digital ID among other things, just see the whole text from their website for yourself!

”This funding will help expand infrastructure that low- and middle-income countries can use to become more resilient to crises such as food shortages, public health threats, and climate change, as well as to aid in pandemic and economic recovery. This infrastructure encompasses tools such as interoperable payment systems, digital ID, data-sharing systems, and civil registry databases.”

There you have it. Bill Gates is pushing hard for digital ID.

Wait a minute there. Why do we need digital ID in order to help with public health threats and climate change? It certainly couldn’t be that there are plans for some kind of climate change passport tied to your digital ID, that would just be a crazy conspiracy theory…Right?

But it doesn’t stop there!

They also have something called ”Goalkeepers”. This is their campaign to ”accelerate progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (or Global Goals)”.

What is this ”Global Goals” they are speaking of?

It is actually the goals outlined in the UN Agenda 2030. You read that correctly. Bill Gates is working to implement Agenda 2030 which is a bunch of goals that the UN has, including a ton of stuff on the climate agenda.

On their website, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is talking about how governments should use digital payments to women in order to achieve one of the goals on Agenda 2030, namely gender equality. I bet digital ID will come in very handy for that…More about that later!

And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is giving out what they call Global Goalkeeper award to people who have done good work in pushing this Agenda 2030.

Guess who was awarded Global Goalkeeper for 2022? Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission…

Gas just went up another 20¢ a gallon around here this week

Biden Begs OPEC for More Oil Again, Gets Massive Cut Instead.

Remember when wages were growing and gas was $2.50 a gallon? OPEC — that cartel of generally nasty nations lucky enough to sit on top of vast oil reserves — didn’t like the situation very much.

That was way back in 2019, when oil went for an average of $64 a barrel and America was a net energy exporter. Then the pandemic hit and the unnecessary lockdowns cratered demand, gas dropped to under $2 per gallon, and a barrel of oil cost about $42. But we can’t really count the lockdowns as a period of normal activity, so let’s try and forget they ever happened.

Hard, isn’t it?

Anyway, now Americans are struggling to make ends meet as inflation outpaces our wages and the economy technically entered a recession earlier this year.

And yet a barrel of oil costs a third more than it did in 2019 and a gallon of gas is now 50% more expensive — and headed higher.

How did we go from a situation where the economy was strong and prices were low to a weak economy and high prices?

There are a number of reasons, but all of them have been exacerbated by the America-hating stupidity of Presidentish Joe Biden and the Democrat party.

American oil production has yet to recover to its peak under President Donald Trump, due entirely to Biden’s on-purpose mismanagement. That’s why, with supply down, prices up, and our Strategic Petroleum Reserve depleted to levels not seen since we were first filling it up, Biden went hat-in-hand to OPEC to beg for more oil.

But he can’t get no respect because he ain’t worthy of any. Now, with our economy wobbling, wages shrinking, and inflation rising, OPEC did the exact opposite of what Biden wanted.

They’re cutting oil output by a massive two million barrels per day.

TWO. MILLION. BARRELS.

That’s a small slice of daily production, but with supplies already tight, prices are sure to take a big bounce. And a bigger chunk out of your paycheck, every time you fill’er up.

It gets worse, though. Because with Biden, it always does.

As recently as Monday, CNBC reported that OPEC was considering cuts of only a million or so barrels.

“Nah,” OPEC said. “Let’s just double that. Because we can.”

I guess they weren’t too moved by Biden’s pleadings.

The Daily Mail says “the major cut is an abrupt turnaround from months of restoring deep cuts made during the depths of the pandemic and could help alliance member Russia weather a looming European ban on oil imports.”

More money for Russia? All this time I thought Biden was at least on Ukraine’s side, if not ours.

The White House was “having a spasm and panicking” the day before the cuts were announced, according to a CNN report.

Nevertheless, a National Security Council spokesweasel had the temerity to insist that “Thanks to the President’s efforts, energy prices have declined sharply from their highs and American consumers are paying far less at the pump.”

Gas cost a little more than two bucks when Biden assumed (and I do mean “assumed”) office. Now the average is about $3.80 — and $6.70 in California, which serves as America’s test lab for bad ideas.

Falling gas prices were the only thing keeping inflation from accelerating even faster over the last two or three months, but it seems even that poor excuse for “the good old days” is over.

Thanks, Joe — just don’t come begging for my vote in 2024.

The Coming Green Electricity Nightmare

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) wanted regulatory reform, in part to reverse some of the Biden Administration’s reversals of Trump-era reforms intended to expedite permits for fossil fuel projects. 

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) needed Manchin’s vote in the 50-50 Senate to enact his latest spending extravaganza, the Inflation Reduction Act, which was primarily a massive climate and “green” energy subsidy arrangement. It gives Schumer allies some $370 billion in wind, solar, battery, and other funding, tax credits, and subsidies. In exchange, Schumer would offer a path for Manchin’s reform bill. 

Manchin voted YEA and promptly got bushwhacked. Once he’d helped enact the IRA, he had zero leverage. Schumer, he discovered, had promised an opportunity, maybe a vote, but not actual support. House and Senate members told him, we weren’t part of your secret negotiations with Schumer; we didn’t shake hands on any deal; we don’t want easier permitting for drilling, pipelines, and LNG terminals that could help send US natural gas to Britain and Europe. 

In the end, it’s probably a good thing Manchin’s bill went nowhere.

Yes, it provided some much-needed and long overdue reforms to curb the paralysis by analysis and endless litigation that have plagued fossil fuels, highways, airports, and countless other projects for decades. 

But it also had Trojan horse provisions that would have unleashed hordes of newly subsidized wind, solar, and transmission marauders on much of the Lower 48 USA, to send pseudo-clean electricity to mostly Democrat cities and states that don’t want even “renewable” power generation in their backyards.

As the Wall Street Journal and energy analyst Robert Bryce observed, Manchin’s “reforms” would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and other bureaucrats the power to issue permits and force multiple states to acquiesce to new transmission lines and 200-foot-tall towers across their scenic, habitat, agricultural and even residential lands – if they decide (decree) that the lines are in the “national interest.” This could easily transform into federal powers of eminent domain, to take the needed acreage.

The feds could decree that thousands of miles of new transmission lines are in the “national interest” if, for instance, the lines “enhance the ability” of faraway wind and solar facilities to connect their intermittent, weather-dependent energy to an electric grid; or enable distant blue states to reach their renewable energy goals; or help achieve Biden Administration goals of stopping manmade climate change, “advancing environmental justice” and having “a net-zero economy” by 2050. 

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And that ‘preferred gauge‘ is the one that a lot of economists think is more accurate.

Fed’s Preferred Gauge Shows Inflation Accelerating Past Expectations

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its August PCE data showing that inflation has not yet peaked — despite now-debunked claims from Speaker Pelosi and the Biden administration — and was worse than Wall Street estimates predicted.

The headline PCE number showed inflation advancing 6.2 percent in the last year with a 0.3 percent increase from July.

The core PCE number that excludes food and energy, what the Federal Reserve looks at to see whether inflation is being tamped-down by — or calls for more — interest rate hikes, advanced 0.6 percent in August for a year-over-year increase of 4.9 percent.

The August PCE read was estimated to show an advance of 0.5 percent over July’s number for a year-over year increase of 4.7 percent. That is, PCE shows inflation again accelerating to outpace economists’ fears.

The BEA’s report outlined which areas saw prices increase and where prices dipped in August:

From the preceding month, the PCE price index for August increased 0.3 percent (table 9). Prices for goods decreased 0.3 percent and prices for services increased 0.6 percent. Food prices increased 0.8 percent and energy prices decreased 5.5 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.6 percent. Detailed monthly PCE price indexes can be found on Table 2.3.4U.

From the same month one year ago, the PCE price index for August increased 6.2 percent (table 11). Prices for goods increased 8.6 percent and prices for services increased 5.0 percent. Food prices increased 12.4 percent and energy prices increased 24.7 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 4.9 percent from one year ago.

Fridays numbers means that the Fed is going to keep its foot on the gas when it comes to interest rate hikes, even if it means a worsening recession in order to bring inflation down to the Fed’s goal of just two percent.

Looking at recent months, the core PCE price index showed a decrease of 0.1 percent in July, but Friday’s report shows that inflation is still raging as the core number swung 0.6 percent in August as costs across the economy continued to increase.

Basically, this is not what Fed Chairman Jerome Powell wanted to see after repeated aggressive interest rate hikes. It also dashes most remaining hopes that a “soft landing” for the U.S. economy is possible.

So no, inflation was not a non-issue, it wasn’t transitory, it hasn’t peaked, and it’s only getting worse. It’s just one of many Biden crises that have caused the president’s approval to remain underwater — even plummeting five points in just one week according to a poll by Morning Consult and Politico this week — and why so few Americans trust him and his “Build Back Better” policies to handle the economy.

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The American public knows better than the White House and Politico that there isn’t any victory to celebrate. This emperor has no clothes. Unfortunately, he’s surrounded by a sycophantic media industry that continues to extol his finery nonetheless.

Biden’s economic victory lap keeps getting interrupted by reality, or something.

It’s tough to tell which party is more clueless in this construct. Is it the White House and Joe Biden, who threw a “Mission Accomplished” celebration of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act on the same day as the CPI report that showed inflation still clocking in above 8%?Or is it Politico, the news organization that wonders why people won’t let Biden have his victory lap while they struggle with five quarters of erosion in real disposable personal income?

Answer: yes.

Emboldened by a string of legislative victories, President Joe Biden has leaned into his record on the economy, increasingly confident that the nation’s outlook is brightening after months under a cloud of rising prices and consumer anxiety.

Wages are up, gas prices are down, the thinking goes. And following a year of fits and starts, Biden clinched congressional deals aimed at reshaping major parts of the U.S. economy — and cementing elements of his own presidential legacy.

But just as the White House was rushing to capitalize on its winning streak — in hopes of turning around an economic narrative that has dogged the administration from its earliest days — complications have arisen. The lengthy fall in gas prices finally ended, inflation has stayed stubbornly high and a bleak global economic landscape has rattled the markets, with both the Dow Jones and S&P 500 nearing their weakest levels of the year.

The cross currents of economic and political news have left the White House in a tricky position.

It’s not just a “tricky position” — it’s a flat-out lie. The Inflation Reduction Act didn’t have anything to do with inflation, and in fact will slightly increase inflation in its first year. The IRA was nothing more than a skinny version of Biden’s Build Back Better plan, with tons of government spending offset somewhat by massively expanding the IRS to suck more resources out of taxpayers to fund it.

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There’s a reason demoncraps want people focused on abortion and made up fascism. “It’s the Economy, stupid!”

Americans have lost $4.2K in income under Biden, study says

The average American has lost $4,200 in annual income since President Biden took office — entirely wiping out gains made under the Trump administration, an analysis from the Heritage Foundation shows.

The losses come down to surging inflation and higher interest rates, experts at the conservative think tank said in a Thursday report.

Their analysis found that the average American has lost about $3,000 in annual purchasing power because consumer prices, which have risen 12.7% since January 2021, have spiked significantly faster than wages.

Wages have risen just 8% over the same period, which has effectively resulted in a pay cut for Americans struggling to pay for daily necessities including food, gas and rent.

Higher interest rates and borrowing costs have also reduced the average person’s purchasing power by another $1,200, according to the report.

“Simply put, working Americans are $4,200 poorer today than when Biden took office,” said EJ Antoni, a research fellow in regional economics with the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis.

“This financial catastrophe for American families is the direct result of a president and Congress addicted to spending our money, combined with a Federal Reserve compliantly enabling this addiction by printing more dollars.”

Under the Trump administration, Heritage said the average American’s annual earnings had increased by $4,000.

Antoni said Americans are in a “vicious spiral” and many have taken on additional debt to cope with higher living costs.

“Now, the Fed is finally fighting inflation, which is pushing up interest rates and increasing financing costs,” he said. “Rates on all kinds of consumer debt are rising. Mortgage interest rates have doubled since Biden took office, greatly increasing Americans’ monthly payments.”

Many New Yorkers griped they are feeling that pinch.

Street cleaner Fiona Santiago, 32, told The Post she is forced to travel from her lower Manhattan home to Brooklyn just to save money on groceries.

“Everything is going up so it affected me drastically,” she said, adding that she’s becoming more out-of-pocket now. “It’s been tight but I’ve been trying to make it. It’s especially affected the low income.

“I don’t even shop in my own neighborhood. I grocery shop in Brooklyn so I could be able to afford it. Where I’m at it’s even worse, I have to go to Brooklyn to shop for my food,” she continued. “Milk is almost $5!”

Marie Shulman, who sells handmade jewelry at markets across the city, said the cost of a taxi or Uber from her Upper East Side apartment down to SoHo has more than doubled for her as inflation surges.

“As far as cost of goods, transportation and other things — it’s like eating part of my profit,” she said. “Back then (a car ride) used to be $30 to come down here, now I have to pay $60 — and on the weekends $100 to go back home.”

Shulman said even the cost for her jewelry supplies has gone up.

“It’s literally almost double and my price stays the same,” she said.

Meanwhile, businesses that had already been ravaged by COVID-19 are now also struggling to stay afloat due to inflation.

“It affects the business because people are now waiting more time between haircuts,” Arthur Iskhakov, who runs the Barbers Blueprint in Little Italy, told The Post.

“So they’re getting haircuts less frequently. COVID devastated our business more than anything else and now inflation isn’t helping.”

Concerns about persistent inflation were renewed this month when federal data showed consumer prices had increased 8.3% in August compared to the same month one year earlier — a figure that was worse than what economists had been expecting.

Biden downplayed the worse-than-expected data, suggesting that an improvement in gas prices was a sign that inflation has started to moderate.

“Today’s data show more progress in bringing global inflation down in the US economy,” Biden said in a statement last week.

“Overall, prices have been essentially flat in our country these last two months: that is welcome news for American families, with more work still to do.”

The Stock Market Officially Collapses Into Bear Market Territory

The Dow Is 1,400 Points Lower Than When Biden Took Office

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 1,400 points below levels observed when President Joe Biden assumed office.

The Federal Reserve increased targets for the federal funds rate by 0.75% on Wednesday afternoon, sending the Dow, which tracks 30 of the most prominent companies on American stock exchanges, tumbling more than 500 points. After stagnating on Thursday, the index fell down another 500 points by early Friday afternoon to 29,400.

On January 20, 2021, the day of Biden’s inauguration, the Dow closed slightly above 30,900.

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 Collapse Of Energy, Food, Transportation Systems Prompt Calls for Government Nationalization of Industries – Echoes 1930s Push for Great Reset Style Reforms.

By:  – Climate Depot September 21, 2022 11:01 AM

Climate Depot Special Report

The continuing fallout from COVID lockdown policies — from the economic collapse to the supply chain issues, to energy, transportation, and food shortages — is reigniting calls and prompting the nationalization of industries in Europe, the U.S, Canada, and Australia.

The modus operandi of the Great Reset (AKA Build Back Better) is to intentionally collapse the current system with policies designed to create a crisis, havoc, and shortages. And the world has descended into chaos since the COVID lockdowns of March of 2020.

See: Yahoo Finance: ‘Firewood is the new gold’ – prices & theft jump in Europe as Russia’s gas cutoff boosts wood demand ahead of winter – 1000% increase in EU energy prices  &

NYT: ‘Crippling’ energy bills force Europe’s factories to go dark

The Great Food Reset has arrived: Expect ‘real’ food shortages, Biden declares

WHY IT IS FINALLY TIME TO NATIONALIZE AMERICA’S FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY TO END OUR SPIRALING ENERGY WAR

California car ban: ‘This is the planned rationing of vehicles’ – ‘They have energy shortages, food shortages, now they want vehicle shortages’ – Calif. borrows Cuban & East German policies

Once the inevitable societal chaos ensues, a huge coordinated push to promote nationalization or government takeover of the impacted industries ensues. It is always claimed that the “free market” failed, and now only government can come in and clean up the mess. The advocates of nationalization usually bill it as a “temporary” nationalization of the industries, much like “15 days to slow the spread” or “2 weeks to flatten the curve” were billed as temporary measures. See: Salon mag in 2022 noted “the long American history of taking over industries during a time of national crisis” and claimed that “temporary nationalization helped get America through the crisis” of World War II. 

Stuart Chase, a key advisor to former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, envisioned an early version of the Great Reset in the 1930s and 1940s, complete with calls for government “control of energy sources—hydroelectric power, coal, petroleum, natural gas.; The control of transportation—railway, highway, airway, waterway; and the control of agricultural production.”

Chase loved the idea of managing all aspects of society. He asked at the end of his 1932 book, A New Deal, “Why should the Soviets have all the fun remaking the world?” Chase’s lust for Soviet ideology could be updated to 2022 by replacing the “Soviets” for “China”.

Here is Chase’s 2022 proposed updated motto:

“Why should China have all the fun remaking the world?”

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Their socialist rhetoric starts to fall on deaf ears when the economy comes into play. It’ll have even less attention paid to it when people are trying to pay their utility bills this winter to stay warm.

Congressional Squad Members, AOC and Tlaib ‘Debunk’ Facts With Nasty Threats

Last week, during a House environmental hearing, Republican Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana laid a haymaker on the Democrats’ star environmental witness, Raya Salter. The witness isn’t a scientist, she’s a lawyer. Before she was a lawyer, she was a community organizer.

Higgins asked some basic, objectively obvious questions of Ms. Salter, but the star flamed out.

Higgins pointed out that everything around Salter from her cell phone to the table at which she was sitting was [born] from petrochemical products.

Instead of answering, she hectored Higgins with platitudes and entreaties to “search his heart” and to “ask his God what you are doing to the Black and poor of Louisiana.” If you were unaware, oil in particular, and energy, in general, are racist.

She got progressively angrier as Congressman Higgins pressed her for an answer — any answer that made sense. Higgins then asked what she would do with ocean-going vessels and the maritime industry. Presumably, she knew that other than US Carriers, and submarines that run on nuclear plants, ships of sea run on oil. She was flabbergasted. She launched back into her harangue about shutting down petrochemicals entirely, avoiding the obvious: that we can’t unless we want to go back to sailing ships and slaughtering whales for lamp oil.

What do you do with air travel?

YOU, SIR, NEED TO SEARCH YOUR HEART! The fossil fuel industry is destroying the earth and the natural world, and that is a fact, sir!

AOC is on the committee and launched into one of her “the worst displays of misogyny” rants at Higgins for daring to ask Salter questions she couldn’t answer. According to AOC, the world is ending in eight years, so one can understand Salter’s urgency to transition back to wooden ships and sail.

This week, another squad member, Rashida Tlaib wanted a moment in the sun to pad her environmental cred with ridiculous questions posed to bankers. She wanted commitments from all of the witnesses that their banks would refuse to lend to the oil industry. Unlike Salter, the panel consisted of reasoning adults, not harpies. The first banker asked was Jamie Dimon, of JPMorgan Chase, the largest of the Big Four banks.

Tlaib: “Does your bank have a policy against funding new oil and gas products, Mr. Dimon?”

Dimon: “Absolutely not, that would the road to hell for America”

Tlaib: “Yeah, that’s fine. You know what, sir, everybody who got relief from student loans and have (sic) accounts with your bank should probably take their account and close their account”

None of the other banks were quite as short and direct as Dimon but the message from the adults was clear: No, we won’t stop lending to the oil industry.

Without oil, everything grinds to a halt. We saw what happened when gas prices simply jumped. If the oil industry stopped because they couldn’t produce, the world economy would collapse in short order. The ore for batteries that Tlaib thinks will “save the planet” gets taken out of ore pits by monstrous earth movers running on diesel. All the ships bringing products to distant shores run on diesel. Trucks run on diesel.

For the foreseeable future, the world will run on oil. No ranting at Congressmen asking basic questions, or a congresswoman badgering bankers is going to change that fact.

Where’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigig?

Freight Train Strike: The Biggest Looming Crisis You’ve Heard Almost Nothing About.

On the menu today: Starting sometime Friday — perhaps as early as just after midnight — U.S. freight-rail workers could go on strike or experience a lockout, and the economic consequences could be far-reaching. What Americans may only be realizing now is that in some ways, the effects of a strike are already here, as freight companies have already halted certain shipments in preparation for a potential strike, and Amtrak has suspended certain routes. Your commuter rails may not be running Friday morning. Also, a farewell to Ken Starr, and a long, fun talk with an old friend.

Why You Should Care about a Freight-Rail Strike

We live in a country where the (currently) ruling political party and most of the national media have a symbiotic relationship. (Jen Psaki started work at NBC News this week.) One of the problems with this dynamic is that when the ruling class decides something is important — say, emphasizing the issue of abortion as the midterm elections approach — it tends to squeeze out everything that the ruling party doesn’t want emphasized.

Don’t get me wrong; abortion is a hugely important issue to many Americans. You can read more about the abortion bill South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham proposed yesterday from Alexandra DeSanctis and Charlie Cooke and John McCormack and Kathryn Jean Lopez.

But there are a lot of other things going on in this world, and one issue that seems spectacularly under-covered — a ticking time bomb, if you will — is that starting at 12:01 a.m. Friday, about a day and a half from now, if there isn’t a new labor deal between freight-rail unions and employers, the U.S. economy will be . . . derailed.

Maybe there will be an eleventh-hour deal; I suspect many casual observers simply assume that a deal will get done because the consequences of even a brief work stoppage would be so far-reaching. But freight companies are already halting certain shipments in preparation for a potential strike, so in some ways, the consequences of a strike are already here.

The American Association of Railroads said this week that it’s begun taking steps to secure the shipments of hazardous and security-sensitive materials, such as chlorine used to purify drinking water and chemicals used in fertilizer. It also warned that “other freight customers may also start to experience delayed or suspended service over the course of [this] week, as the railroads prepare for the possibility that current labor negotiations do not result in a resolution and are required to safely and securely reduce operations.”

At noon today, Norfolk Southern will close all gates to intermodal traffic — that means anything using multiple modes of transportation such as rail, ship, aircraft, and truck. BSNF Railway, one of the largest freight railroads in North America, stopped accepting intermodal traffic as of 12:01 a.m. this morning.

Amtrak has already suspended most cross-country routes and announced that, “It will only operate trains that can reach their final destination by 12:01 a.m. on Friday, when a freight rail strike or lockout could begin.” Without a deal, most Amtrak operations in California will be suspending operations starting on Thursday.

A freight-rail strike will also bring commuter-rail services to a halt in some areas: “Virginia Railway Express said if there is a strike it would immediately stop all of its commuter train service because Norfolk Southern owns the tracks for VRE’s Manassas Line, and CSX owns the tracks for its Fredericksburg Line.” Across the Potomac in Maryland, “Since CSX owns and maintains the Camden and Brunswick lines in addition to dispatching MARC trains, any labor strike would result in the immediate suspension of all MARC Camden and Brunswick Line service until a resolution is reached.” It’s the same story for Metra, the commuter-rail system serving the city of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, and Metrolink, the commuter-rail service that serves southern California.

The U.S. Department of Transportation estimated that a freight-rail strike would cost the economy about $2 billion a day, but that’s just a big, abstract figure in most people’s minds. What Americans will notice is all kinds of products getting scarcer and more expensive (again).  As our Dominic Pino notes, crude oil, natural-gas liquids, refined products, petrochemicals, and plastics are transported by rail, meaning that a disruption in freight-rail service is likely to spur a gas-price increase (again). The average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas nationwide is currently $3.70, which is better than the $5 per gallon price of mid June, but it’s still high by historical standards.

Once again, if you read local press or trade publications, you realize how many things in this country grind to a halt if there’s a freight-rail strike. From EnergyWire:

Chemicals make up the second-largest category of rail freight after coal — 55,000 carloads a week — and there aren’t enough trucks and barges to handle the volume, said Jason Miller, a professor in the department of supply chain management at Michigan State University.

A prolonged strike would have a bigger impact on the economy than the shutdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic, Miller said.

“At least during Covid, you able to keep [chemical] production going, oil production going,” he said. “You can’t do that with a rail strike.”

Farmers have a limited window to get their harvested crops to buyers before the food spoils, and for many crops, this is harvest time; farmers are now wondering if the usual rail options will be available after Friday:

A painful example of supply chain concern can be found in soybean farming. Hungry markets in Asia and elsewhere count on soybeans to make the ships in the Gulf of Mexico and the west coast.

“It’s gonna be devastating because just about all of the soybeans that are produced here go to a crush plant, and that crush plant is in Hastings, and they send two unit trains of soybean meal per week to the Pacific Northwest,” Greving said. He sits on the USDA United Soybean Board. “That is loaded on bulk vessels there and shipped to Southeast Asia.”

The price of oil affects everybody, farmers included. A rail shutdown would also stop the delivery of corn to most ethanol plants.

Remember, many of the world’s food markets are still reeling from the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the near-complete shutdown of Ukraine’s food exports.

Yesterday, I briefly mentioned that a strike could disrupt the flow of coal to power plants. Grist lays out why there aren’t any realistic alternatives to get coal to those plants:

Because the fuel is so heavy and takes up so much space, rail is the only economical way to transport it from mines to power plants: The average coal train consists of 140 cars that each hold about as much coal as could fit on ten trucks. Even if coal could be shifted onto trucks, the trucking industry itself has also been experiencing labor shortages, and there’s not much excess truck capacity to absorb rail freight. . . .

“Coal stockpiles are already at historic lows in the United States,” said [John Ward, the executive director of the National Coal Transportation Association, a trade group representing coal shippers and buyers]. “Any further interruptions could be disastrous for power generation.

In the good old days, it wasn’t uncommon for utilities to have a 60- or 90-day supply of fuel, but I don’t know anybody who has that luxury now. If it became an extended strike, the consequences could be dire.” Should utilities burn through their stockpiles, they’ll have to slow down generation to save supply, which could lead to power shortages during times of peak demand. Prices would jump for as long as the supply backlog lasted.

The worst-affected places would be states like West Virginia and Missouri, which generate around 90 percent of their electricity from coal and don’t have the opportunity to switch to natural gas on short notice. Even states with large gas supplies will struggle, though, since gas markets are also tight as producers export large quantities of gas to Europe.

In case you’re wondering, no, trucks cannot pick up the slack. The American Trucking Association says it simply doesn’t have the spare trucks or manpower. “Idling all 7,000 long distance daily freight trains in the U.S. would require more than 460,000 additional long-haul trucks every day, which is not possible based on equipment availability and an existing shortage of 80,000 drivers,” ATA president and CEO Chris Spear wrote in a letter to Congress. “As such, any rail service disruption will create havoc in the supply chain and fuel inflationary pressures across the board.”

In other words, the strike scheduled to begin in, what, 36 to 40 hours after you read this, would be a far-reaching economic calamity.

And, in the eyes of some analysts, the country is in this spot because of the Biden administration’s decision-making, which aimed to maximize the leverage of its union allies:

“That this might occur right before the midterm elections is entirely self-inflicted by the Biden administration, where two of President Biden’s National Mediation Board [NMB] members took the bizarre step in June of terminating board-guided mediation two months early and starting the 90-day countdown to a possible rail strike,” Scribner told FOX Business, calling the move “unprecedented.”

If the NMB had stuck to the original schedule, Scribner says, the cooling-off period would have ended in mid-November. But instead, the board decided to cut things short.

If this was indeed some deliberate Biden administration strategy, you must wonder how well it thought this through, or whether the administration’s plan counted on a deal being reached by now. Because if there’s anything we know Joe Biden is loath to do, it’s suspending Amtrak service.

By the way, the potential railroad strike is mentioned in the 29th paragraph of today’s newsletter over at Politico. Today’s Axios newsletter does not mention the potential strike at all.

Hawley Calls Out Credit Card Companies for Tracking Gun-Related Purchases

On Tuesday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called out three major credit card companies over their decision to separate gun-related purchases from other transactions made with their payment cards.

To recap, the Associated Press reported this week that Visa said on Saturday that it will start separately categorizing sales made on their payment methods at gun shops. The report described this as a “major win” for those in favor of gun control, claiming it will “help better track suspicious surges of gun sales that could be a prelude to a mass shooting.” Mastercard and American Express said they would categorize these types of sales as well.

Townhall site Bearing Arms noted that this came after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) urged credit card companies to “do their part” to stop gun violence.

Bearing Arms also noted that the CEO of Amalgamated Bank claims this move by credit card companies “answers the call of millions.”

In a letter to the CEOs of Visa, Mastercard and American Express, Hawley explained how this move “attempts to undermine the Second Amendment’s protections” and that the policy is “ripe for abuse.”

I write to express serious concern with your decision to separately categorize gun-related purchases from other retail transactions made with your payment cards so that firearm purchases can be more easily tracked,” Hawley wrote, before outlining how the policy targets law-abiding Americans.

Too often, companies have abused their market power to target the constitutional rights of conservatives and others with minority viewpoints. Big Tech companies systematically deplatformed those who sought to discuss the efficacy of masks and vaccines or raise concerns about the integrity of our elections. The crowdfunding platform GoFundMe blocked donations to the Canadian “Freedom Rally” trucker convoy. And WePay, a payment processor subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase – the largest bank in the United States – refused to do business with Missouri conservatives seeking to host an event with Donald Trump, Jr. Your proposal to track firearm-related purchases further threatens Americans who are simply exercising their constitutional rights.

The Second Amendment is clear: the right of the people to keep and bear arms is guaranteed to law-abiding citizens and “shall not be infringed.” Whether this infringement is by the federal government or powerful corporations seeking to ostracize citizens for exercising their rights, I will oppose all attempts to undermine the Second Amendment’s protections.

Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and other payment card companies should not distinguish lawful firearm-related purchases from other retail purchases. Americans have had enough of massive companies using their market power to drive ordinary people out of the public square. These practices must end.

Julio reported this month how Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke, who is running against Texas’ Republican Governor Greg Abbott, had called for credit card companies to “cut off the sales of weapons of war today” when he was running for president in 2019.

In 2019, Visa CEO Alfred Kelly told CNBC that it would continue to “facilitate” gun purchases as long as it’s legal to do so.

“We are guided by the federal laws in a country, and our job is to create and to facilitate fair and secure commerce,” Kelly told the outlet. The came after reports broke that payment platforms Square and PayPal do not allow their services to be used for gun sales.

Kelly added that lawmakers “need to do their job” when it comes to guns and that “if we start to get in the mode of being legislators it’s’ a very slippery slope.”

“We shouldn’t be determining what’s right or wrong in terms of people’s purchases,” he said at the time.