Matt Stoller instructs us, in a piece provocatively titled “On Inflation: It’s the Monopoly Profits, Stupid,” that more economists are (finally!) coming around to the notion that we’re not in a “wage-price spiral” but a “profits-inflation spiral.” I mean, you and I just looked at rising corporate profits and rising prices and figured that out, but it’s still good to get some data behind it, not just from Josh Bivens at EPI (who said a few months back that price-gouging caused a little over half of our current inflation), but also at least two Federal Reserve banks and Mike Konczal and Niko Lusiani at the Roosevelt Institute. Also too, “the most financialized sectors of the economy are the ones most adept at exploiting pricing power during the pandemic,” likely due to “cheap money from the Fed sloshing around Wall Street.” In other words, banksters ruin everything. And don’t forget how many CEOs brag about their ability to raise prices!
It’s easy to laugh at Sen. Ron Johnson (E-WI) having an absurd amount of trouble explaining away why staffers in his office tried to hand former Vice President Pence an “alternate slate of electors” right before January 6, and indeed I don’t know how yelling “IT WAS ALL STAFF TO STAFF!” even sounded good in his head, but remember that this guy has won two Senatorial elections, albeit not with more than 51% of the vote, and with our “liberal” media doing its damnedest to create a Republican wave, Mr. Johnson is, once again, one really inspired TV ad away from winning an election, and maybe this time he won’t even risk getting peed on by his grandkid while changing his diaper. Still, even if he serves as long as William Proxmire God forbid, his underlings will get tired of him throwing them under the bus. I’d prefer not to wait for that to happen, though. Two terms is at least two terms too many for the man who gives the “Citizen Legislator” a bad name.
Finally, I don’t know if our Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade today – Friday’s a good day to do something like that, since our “liberal” media reporters will be trying to get out of town already – but if they do, I think two things will happen. One, right-wing politicians will not celebrate! Sounds counterintuitive, to say the least, but how can you celebrate victories when you’re constantly ginning up outrage among your votaries over what they’ve lost? Besides, right-wingers are hunting bigger game – making birth control illegal and domestic abuse legal in the short term, taking away a woman’s freedom to do anything but submit to a man’s whims in the long term. Two, if you remember how Obamacare suddenly went from Democratic liability to Democratic weapon in 2017 and 2018, you know that people really, really hate suddenly losing something they rely upon. Of course right-wing politicians will always be able to get abortions for their daughters and mistresses, but regular folks will not take well to having legal abortions taken away – and they won’t take well to the Republicans who took them away.
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