By Chris Powell
Last week the U.S. Labor Department admitted that inflation is running at nearly 8%, the highest rate in 40 years. Since the government’s inflation measures have been revised many times in those 40 years to diminish the calculation of price increases and thereby mislead the public, some experts outside government maintain that the real inflation rate is 15% or even 20%.
Also last week Connecticut’s members of Congress boasted about all the goodies — “earmarks” — they had inserted into the $1.5 trillion federal appropriations bill.
The legislation, according to Connecticut’s delegation — all Democrats — is providing $144 million for 122 projects in the state. (Altogether the legislation is said to have more than 4,000 “earmarks.”) Among Connecticut’s are $2.5 million for the Boys and Girls Club in Milford, $105,000 for an after-school program in Waterbury, $2 million to start a worker-owned commercial laundry in New Haven, $1.5 million to replace a bridge in Middletown, $1.8 million for water and sewer pipes in Manchester, $900,000 for Johnson Memorial Hospital in Stafford, $34,000 for South Windsor’s emergency operations center, and, with perfect irony, $160,000 for “waste and sludge disposal” in West Haven, whose city government lately has been full of waste and sludge — the insiders who looted several times that amount from the city’s most recent federal grant.
Nobody in authority in Connecticut last week put the record inflation together with another bloated appropriations bill or any recent appropriations bill. Nobody in authority linked the goodies to an increase in federal taxes.
For Congress has discovered that federal taxes are obsolete because the government can create money to infinity — as long as the Federal Reserve is ready to monetize government bonds and as long as nobody cares about the devaluation of the currency that results when the increase in the money supply outruns not just national production of goods and services but, since the dollar is the reserve currency for the world, international production as well.
Instead the Biden administration blamed the record inflation on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though the new inflation figures were calculated before the invasion and before economic sanctions disrupted international markets.
At least inflation has become a political issue in Connecticut, with Governor Lamont and both Democratic and Republican state legislators aiming to suspend or reduce state taxes on gasoline, now that gas has reached $4.50 per gallon and seems likely to go higher while state government has a large financial surplus.
Yes, people deserve some relief.
But will anyone in authority in Connecticut note that, from its beginning three years ago, the current Democratic state administration and many Democratic state legislators were openly striving to drive up the cost of conventional energy in the hope of making “green” energy more viable? With gas approaching $5 a gallon, the Democrats now are getting exactly what they wanted — or what they wanted until they got it. If markets return to normal, the Democrats may return to their agenda of higher energy costs, even though “green” energy is far from able to replace much conventional energy.
Will anyone in authority in Connecticut risk telling people that, nice as some of the “earmarks” in the federal appropriations bill are, few are relevant to the responsibilities of the federal government and that most are arbitrary patronage pork? And will anyone in authority tell people that the pork is not really free, that people are paying for it not through regular taxes but through currency depreciation — inflation — which is a tax as regressive as the gas taxes politicians now want to suspend?
PATRIOTISM FADES: Americans watching television and admiring the brave Ukrainians defending their country against invasion should take a moment to look in the mirror instead.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll last week, only 55% of Americans say they would stay and fight if their country was invaded, while 38% say they would leave. By a margin of 68%-25%, Republicans say they would fight. Unaffiliated voters say they would fight by 57%-36%. But Democrats are closely divided, 52% saying they’d fight, 40% saying they’d leave.
Such lack of patriotism may cheer Russian President Vladimir Putin and tyrants everywhere.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
Chris Powell column 