By John Kass
21 August 2024
During the nearly 40 years I worked as a reporter, columnist and editorial board member at a faded (but once great) Chicago metropolitan newspaper, I regularly conducted an unpopular experiment on colleagues:
I would ask them if they have ever prepared a payroll while simultaneously dealing with other bills for electricity, taxes and other operating expenses.
In other words, had they ever run a business?
It seemed reasonable to ask this question, since journalists were so eager and willing to comment on economic issues, from unaffordable teacher contracts to “property tax swaps” to lengthy elaborations on the importance of “community investment.” Sometimes I asked for a show of hands when I conducted the experiment.
“Have you ever run a business before?”
But no one ever raised their hand.
No one.
They just stared at me sullenly, as if I was speaking a Mongolian dialect. Finally, I gave up and stopped asking.
But I saw the truth. Before newspapers woke up, they had a lot of money. They were rich and happy. No one was ever laid off. The newspapers had more money than they could spend.
But American journalists really don’t want to bother with business issues, with “expenses” and “production costs” and “profits and losses.” And they often avoid the most vexing subject of all:
Reality.
And there was a secret to success in American journalism.
Feelings. It was about expressing feelings. And emotions.
So if you were tasked with writing a story about the faces of supermarket shoppers who forgo expensive and overpriced foods like milk and bread, or those who can’t even afford hot dogs for a Fourth of July barbecue, you would be writing a story of heartbreak, anger, frustration and despair.
If you didn’t feel your pain, you wouldn’t have any feelings at all.
Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate who is desperately trying to distance herself from the Joe Biden disaster, has feelings.
She is determined to win, which is why she called Joe Biden a racist before eventually ingratiating herself with him and joining his administration.
To distinguish herself from Joe, she recently announced a drastic plan: If elected, she would use her powers to order the federal agency to control rising inflation costs.
In other words, government price controls like those in the Stalin era, before farmers gave up and famine struck Ukraine. Stalin argued that to make an omelet, you had to break eggs. And his de facto but unofficial PR agent, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Walter Duranty of the New York Times, agreed. Some eggs had to be broken, and if millions were starving… well, you can’t cry over broken eggs, can you?
“On day one,” she promised – perhaps forgetting that she had been at the helm of the Biden administration for more than a thousand days – “I will crack down on price gouging and lower costs. We will ban even more of the hidden fees and surprise late fees that banks and other companies use to supplement their profits.
“We will stand up to big landlords and limit unfair rent increases,” she continued. “And we will stand up to the pharmaceutical industry to limit the cost of prescription drugs for all Americans. Our plan will lower costs and save many middle-class families thousands of dollars a year.”
She talks about price controls.
Yes.
Price controls didn’t work in the Soviet Union and under Stalin, and the Soviets, like today’s democrats, controlled the media. And then came the famine.
Most of the inflation in America since 2020 is due to Kamala Harris, as Vice President, twice breaking the Senate majority vote to pass the American Rescue Plan of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. These did not reduce inflation; they caused it, they were the match to the dumpster fire. Trillions of dollars in cash were pumped into the economy and the inevitable happened, and every American with a basic understanding of economics knew what was coming:
There was too much money for too few goods. Gasoline was less than $2 a gallon. And then the prices of everything started to rise as the inflation tax hit too much government spending. Milk and eggs and coffee, beef and bread, everything went up, and many Americans were forced to make choices.
There were mothers and fathers who skipped meals so their children could eat. We never thought something like this would happen again in America, but it did. And some seniors had to choose between medicine and food. It was the Democrats and their selling of their “feelings” that got us here.
Not all corrupt mainstream media supported Kamala Harris’ Soviet-style plan. The left-wing Washington Post condemned it, as did the far more rational Wall Street Journal.
The Washington Post’s editorial board condemned Harris’ idea as a “gimmick.” It was too friendly.
Instead of “talking honestly to voters” and saying that “inflation rose so sharply in 2021 largely because the pandemic disrupted supply chains, and that Federal Reserve policies supported by the Biden-Harris administration are aimed at slowing it,” the vice president “chose a less direct approach: He blamed big corporations,” the Washington Post wrote.
“Ms Harris says she will target companies that make ‘excessive’ profits, whatever that means.”
The Washington Post sharply criticized her idea of offering $25,000 to help first-time buyers with their down payment, saying it risked “putting upward pressure on prices.”
Really? If you sell a house, you benefit because this nonsense immediately drives up house prices by $25,000 or more. But it also drives up prices by at least that $25,000. And young people can’t afford the cost of a house.
The principle also applies when the government subsidizes student loans. Let’s say the daughter of a Hinsdale surgeon gets her loan for a PhD in gender studies forgiven by Uncle Joe Biden and the spendthrift Democrats. And after the loan is forgiven, who pays the loan? The bank? Don’t be silly. The electrician or pipefitter, the carpenter or butcher pay. The workers who didn’t waste money or time on gender studies are the ones who pay.
Harris is not the only economically uneducated person in Democratic politics who is in the dark at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week.
Chicago’s neo-Marxist mayor Brandon Johnson – the mayor of panic attacks – wants to run his own state-run grocery stores, just like Comrade Stalin. Walter Duranty is no longer with us, but the Times has plenty of press agents for Kamala. Others have moved to Chicago to give Johnson political protection – a nice deal for a clueless idiot.
When Johnson talks about his grocery business, I think of my father. My father and my Uncle George were grown men and toiled for years as waiters and busboys in downtown Chicago hotels just to scrape together enough money to open a small independent grocery store on the Southwest Side in the Gage Park neighborhood. They worked at least 12 hours a day, year after year, with no vacation.
I wonder: If Johnson doesn’t like putting criminals in prison – he supported George Soros’ prosecutor Kim Foxx – what would he do with shoplifters in the fancy state-owned City Hall stores?’
Hug her?
Or give them candy bars to get votes? Or most likely raise taxes on the Chumbolones who stay in the city.
My friend, conservative radio host Dan Proft, calls Mayor Johnson’s grocery stores “Gimmie Dat” stores because shoplifters take what they want.
Who pays for the economic ignorance of democratic politicians who govern with emotions?
The people pay.
They pay for the tricks with higher taxes. And they pay the inflation tax because Harris unleashed inflation by dumping more than a trillion dollars of newly printed money on the weakened economy, which is why many Americans can no longer afford the luxury of bacon and eggs. That is why inflation has risen. That is why the prices of eggs, meat and milk are high. The politicians snicker. And the people pay.
People also pay with increased violent crime. They pay purely with fear, by riding public transit in big blue cities like Chicago, and by electing Democrat Soros prosecutors who do nothing. People pay and pay.
I used to think that it would be beneficial for economically uneducated voters and officials to work in the private sector before entering government.
Or at least by looking at the cartoon I link to here: from Leonard Read’s brilliant 1958 essay “I Pencil.”
But even a simple cartoon is beyond the capabilities of Harris and Johnson.
Harris has never worked in the private sector, aside from a summer job at McDonald’s. And Johnson was a teacher and union organizer for Chicago’s real political power, the Chicago Teachers Union. The Democrats claim they are in the fundraising business, but that’s a lie.
They are not in the business of giving. They are in the business of taking. They use their influence in government to take.
Eventually, the people who do the work break down, like overworked mules or donkeys or rusty tractors. And the ones who make the pencils and the farmers who raise the beef and the vegetables and the chickens and the lentils and the wheat just can’t do it anymore, with or without Walter Duranty of the New York Times.
Until then, the shelves will be empty.
And people are starving. Their children are starving.
Don’t worry about the politicians. Don’t worry about the Democrats. They’re always taken care of. They’re always wet-beaked. That’s the Chicago way. And in Chicago, the host city of the Democratic Convention, they’ve got fat, juicy six-figure public pensions. And lots of golf. When the bill finally comes due, they’re gone.
They are never there when the bill needs to be paid, and especially not economically uneducated people like Kamala Harris, Joe Biden or Brandon Johnson. They live a life like in a fairy tale land.
But you’ll still be there, right? And if you’re not, your children will still be there when you’re gone. The children are the ones who pay for this. They pay for our economic ignorance and our emotions and our politics. They always pay.
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About the author: John Kass worked for decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago at a major metropolitan newspaper. He co-hosts the podcast “The Chicago Way.” And he loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.
