Biden is boasting on the economy (which has improved), but the latest stats show an American engine still stuck in first gear. For the last six quarters, the economy has grown at roughly 1.5%. That's not a recession, but we should be growing twice that fast. And take out government (which is fake growth), and GDP is at a snail's pace of closer to a measly 1.25%.
The latest Atlanta Fed GDP Now report is worrisome. It indicates that the GDP for Q2 grew by 1.7%. Just seven weeks ago, they were predicting 4.2%. That's quite a slowdown.
Former Biden White House antitrust guru, Tim Wu, who coined the term "net neutrality," takes to the New York Times with a headline that so fully and worrisomely captures the mentality of the new left in America.
Wu explains:
The judiciary needs to realize that the First Amendment is spinning out of control. It is beginning to threaten many of the essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.
Isn't this just a wonderful thought for the 4th of July?
Vogue magazine has just released its THIRD cover story on Jill Biden in just the last three years. This time in a $4,990 Ralph Lauren dress. Melania Trump never appeared on this or virtually ANY woman's magazine cover. Maybe it's because Melania speaks with a foreign accent.
In the article, she likens herself to something of an American Eva Perón: "We will decide our future."
The slobbering article notes: "She's fighting so hard for him to get a second term because there are things they've got left on the agenda."
We suspect that Jill is running the show in the White House. She's the one clinging to power and most responsible for the elder abuse.
Who does she think she is? Edith Wilson, wife of President Woodrow Wilson? That is the woman who functionally ran the White House for a year in 1920 after the President suffered a severe stroke.
Jason Furman errs in relying on a supposed Phillips curve trade-off between inflation and unemployment in his op-ed "The Fed Can Take Its Time Taming Inflation" (June 17). A plot of inflation and unemployment data from 1978 to 2023--with each point reflecting the change in the inflation rate and the following year's change in the unemployment rate--shows neither a strong relationship between the rates nor a systematic trade-off between them.
5) NY Teachers Unions Fight to Keep Incompetent Teachers on the Job
New York has some of the worst schools in the country, so naturally, the unions' (and the politicians') priority is to make sure that teachers who can't teach have their tenure assured, so they can keep collecting paychecks.
Governor Kathy Hochul just signed a bill repealing proposed quality standards. The Albany Times–Union news story on the bill bluntly stated it "returns tenured teachers to their previous nearly untouchable state."
Tenured teachers who score poorly on their evaluations will no longer face possible termination.
Teachers union president, Melinda Person, thanked Hochul for repealing a "punitive, test-focused model" of teacher evaluations. The measurements that graded teachers on test scores, student growth scores, and other success markers have all been repealed.
Person explained that the new evaluation standards are all "about restoring the daily joy of teaching and learning, and it is about evaluating our educators like the professionals they are." In other words, results don't matter, just have taxpayers send more money every year to enhance the "joy of teaching and learning."
Is it any wonder that over a dozen states have passed universal school choice plans that march in entirely the opposite direction of New York? We are truly becoming a nation of two public school systems – one where parents have a real say in the education of their children and another where the teacher union monopoly is further entrenching itself.
