A report last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on productivity got overlooked with all of the debt deal hooplas.
But what was remarkable was the whopper revision in hourly compensation. Instead of a 4.9% rise in wages, they DECLINED by -0.7% in the quarter. The real compensation (after inflation) was -4.7%. That’s quite a pay cut.
Now look at the comparison of wage increases under Trump versus the wage cuts under Obama. Reagan used to bludgeon Jimmy Carter about the decline in “real take-home pay” during the Carter years. Every conservative should be talking about that same syndrome under Biden.
2) Outrage of the Week: Corporate CEO’S Receiving ESG Bonuses
Just when we thought we were turning the tide on ESG madness on Wall Street and in corporate board rooms, we learn this:
Barron's reports that Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol got a $2.1 million bonus last year for meeting ESG goals. Dominion CEO Robert Blue got a $1.75 million ESG bonus.
"Over 60% of S&P 500 companies included ESG measures in executive pay last year, up from 19% in 2019," they report.
The villains here are the boards of directors who are rewarding CEOs for pursuing left-wing political objectives that are more likely to destroy than create shareholder value. This is a boat that needs rocking.
3) Out of 49 Senate Republicans, 21 Voted for Rand Paul's Amendment to Balance the Budget
Senator Paul set the standard for fiscal conservatives with his plan to cut federal spending by 5% per year to achieve balance within five years. His plan only raised the debt ceiling by $500 billion – and was the only plan designed to prevent another debt ceiling hike in the near future. This vote was almost completely ignored by the national media, so we wanted to print the list of yes votes.
Here are the 21 senators who voted for the Rand plan:
4) Liberals Were Against Castration Before They Were For It
We’ve been doing some historical research collecting all the crazy claims Democrats in Congress made against the historic 1996 welfare reforms signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Welfare reform was, of course, an enormous policy success with lower caseloads, the fastest decline in overall and child poverty rates since welfare began, etc.
Democrats have been reprising some of the same fallacious accusations against Republicans in recent weeks because the debt ceiling bill restored some work requirements.
Back in 1996, Nancy Pelosi seethed that the welfare reform would devastate children and was "a dishonor to the God that made them." (Who knew she believed in God?)
In one of the most incendiary speeches on the House floor in modern times, Rep. John Lewis of Georgia likened welfare reform to sending the Jews to Nazi concentration camps as he infamously exclaimed that "they are coming for the children, coming for the poor, coming for the sick, the elderly and disabled."
But our favorite quote came from recently retired Missouri Democrat William Clay, the first black Rep. from the state of Missouri, who seethed at welfare reform supporters: "What's next? Castration."
We can’t help seeing the heavy irony in that charge given that today’s LGBTQ Democrats are now all in on sterilizing kids.
For those of us who remember not so long ago when San Francisco was a world-class city, this is getting sadder by the day:
The company explained:
Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges — both old and new. Record high vacancy; concerns over street conditions; lower return to office than peer cities; and a weaker than expected citywide convention calendar through 2027 that will negatively impact business and leisure demand and will likely significantly reduce compression in the city for the foreseeable future.
