The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome. Welcome, Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Great to be together.
In a few moments, we’ll hear again a second time. In a couple of days from John Schlafly, but also an update from Chris Chmielenski, Chris Chmielenski is over at this Numbers USA numbersusa.org is their website. Great group, great people. Chris is wonderful. We’re gonna talk about immigration and the reality over this Independence Day of the problem of immigration. We are out of control in this country that we are not bringing in the immigrants with a plan, with a vision that’s not the that’s the right word, not forget the plan, just a vision for what is to be what the the reality that, of Immigration in this country and what a. Mess it is. So we have a lot of work to do. We’ll talk about that in a moment.
But first, let me talk to you about something that I think is important. We have yet another jobs report that came out earlier on Friday. Basically disappointing numbers, but still grow, still enough jobs. And everybody’s talking about now the feds going to raise rates again. They’ll have to that the economy is off, off, still not. It’s still off kilter. But here’s the problem. I’ve got to tell you the problem.
Over the Independence Day weekend. Over the long weekend, something became clear to me with all of our family home. We did what a lot of families do and we had traditions that we’ve done where we’d gather in certain places and do certain things. We had a parade in our town. We have fireworks and all. But a couple of. Places over the last week, we ate out as a family because we often did that. One place a pizzeria. Another place is actually only some of our family. My daughter and my wife and I like Thai food. The other kids don’t. But we had that. We went to restaurants that we’ve gone to before and I have to say the cost of going out to eat of the food was up dramatically. At least 25%. So now to be clear, we probably haven’t had Thai food in at least a year. Could have been two years because we haven’t been back to that. I’m not sure when we were back to that. A Thai restaurant and we haven’t had that pizzeria in at least a year because it’s over with the where we go during the 4th of July. During that time period and so, it’s extraordinary to me. To realize. How much food has gone up in and, and that’s what caught my eye now. Now I positioned that in the midst of understanding that one of the causes. Of the unrest in France, one of the one argument made nobody can say the cause for sure, one argument made is that food prices have gone up dramatically in Europe, food prices have gone up in the last year dramatically, and especially in places like France. So a year ago you would have bought a loaf of bread for a dollar, and this year you’d buy it would be $1.50, dramatically like that, and that people have been, the unrest amongst lower income people, has been particularly anxious. I’m not sure I buy it as a. Cause, but I certainly buy it as a reality and the reality for a lot of people and now think about what it’s like. If you’re someone. Who has less income has less options. You know you cannot decide you’re going to change up if you live in a neighborhood and a community where. You know, there’s only a handful of places that you go to eat or buy your food, and you’re not going to go shop around. You’re not going to have as much flexibility in the economic broadly in economic sense you’re you’re not going to have as many options. And so one of the things I’m going to bring to your attention ohh and and the the columnist who is writing about this did refer to the fact that at various times in history, people have gotten torqued over prices of food. And prices of, say, tea in the case of tea, wasn’t the prices. It was a tax on tea in our founding period. But that things that hit home for a broader set of people. More common folk have an impact on how things go, and that was the argument this person was making. I would say this. There is something wrong with our economic indicators. If the economy is gaining jobs and the stock market is going up, but more and more people are feeling the crunch of the inflationary prices around things like food because I can’t even complain about gas prices.
Gas prices have come down a bit. I mean, it looks like gas prices have sort of certainly stabilized and gone down a little bit, mean it’s still expensive, more more expensive than when when the previous president was in where we had a, you know, all all hands on deck, you would drill and you do everything else.
The reality is food prices are up. And it’s affecting a lot of people. And it’s not going away. It’s not. It’s not sliding back. In fact, if anything, it’s going the opposite way. It’s it’s more broadly clear to me that milk is up. Eggs were up for a while. People realize that bacon. I told them that when bacon is up, you know you these sort of staple foods, things are up.
But another factor in Europe by the way is the Ukrainian war. Impacts a lot of the food the bread Ukraine is often referred to as the bread basket of Europe because of the grain and and the agriculture that comes out of the the sort of fertile lands in Ukraine and so. But that’s affected the prices. The prices have gone up there.
So what’s going to happen, We get going back to school where people really start to feel you can’t adjust to if you have the summers where people on vacation, they feel like things are different. Get back to school in America and you’re going to see that impact even more. So I I have to say it’s it is a factor that I had not noticed. Maybe I was like the frog in the in the hot water. I was just getting used to it and where my day-to-day life. Whereas when we were on this holiday period where Independence Day where we did some things that we usually do when we’re on vacation and we noticed it. That I was struck by how costly it was.
So listen, what you need to know is when peace, when people, when people are. Feeling that crunch It’s going to have an impact and so across Europe, by the way, there’s a Spanish election in the next few weeks. There’ll be some other elections, I’m not sure if France is up, but there’ll be elections and of course we go into 2024 when the European Parliament has their elections. Those elections are going to take place in the spring and in the spring in some of the countries and into the summer for the European Parliament. And then, of course our elections. And so the question is what will have changed? And will things have changed for the worse? And if they are for the worse, what’s the impact? What’s the impact? Because you know, go all the way back to the 1992 where the immensely popular George HW Bush, president United States was running for reelection and everyone said Ohh, he just won the Gulf War in a, you know, in a in a a minute he’s going to be so popular by the time he was on the ballot in November of ’92, the economy was it, stupid as the phrase that was on the wall of the campaign committee, the campaign headquarters of the of the Bill Clinton campaign for presidency, said it’s the economy, stupid, famously. And it was. And I think that’s what you need to know, more and more people feel economically like the swamp. Is doing fine and the people in the swamp are taking care of themselves and they will not be impacted, but the rest of us we are swimming upstream in an economy that seems to be going faster and faster against us. Food prices, the cost of of your loans if you have a if you have a I was hearing this, the statistics on this a lot of people have a loan on their home. If you have a loan on your home, a lot of people have a second loan and we either one of those. If they’re on adjusted rates or the cost of the loans are going up. The cost of the loans are going up dramatically and they’re going up again and the next few months you’re going to see the Fed raise rates again. So what will the impact be On elections, we’ll see. We’ll see.
All right, one follow up. One more thing, which you need to know. One follow up for you. I did speak in the last couple of weeks about Moms for Liberty Moms for Liberty, based in Florida national in scope. Moms for America is our old friend Kimberly Fletcher, originally based in Nebraska. She’s now living in down. In Southern Missouri, well, where she has had family, I think. And so she moved there. But they’re national also. Two groups. One of the things I was. Telling someone is. The reality of those groups is that they often they’ll be four or five or six groups in the same space. And so when you hear Moms for Liberty think one thing, well, Moms from America and they’re overlapping now, Moms for Liberty, I think is focused more on school board races and Moms for America is focused more broadly on empowering families and moms, especially in terms of politics. But both are doing really good work. Both are doing really good work and making a big difference. So I just wanted to mention that because one of my friends. And one of our Phyllis Schlafly Eagles heard me speaking about it and said, oh, yeah, that’s Kimberly Fletcher. Well, two different groups that are in this space helping empower moms especially. Alright, then we will. I’ll follow up on both of those efforts. I’d I’d send Kimberly Fletcher a text asking her. For some updates so that I can make sure you all heard about it. So a lot happening out there in the, in the communities close to our elections close to our the local elections is what I mean.
All right, let me say wrapping up too on this. I want to make sure to point you to PhyllisSchlafly.com in a few moments, we will talk with John Schlafly on his column, which is posted there. But also, if you’re not signed up for the daily e-mail, the daily WYNK sign up there and you also will get our emails as we send out more and more of we’re rolling them out over these last 6 excuse me, it’s about 2 1/2 weeks and we’ll be continuing to do it for a few more weeks. A total of about six weeks of the Collegians participants: Jason Smith, the congressman who is from Missouri, who’s on the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, his recent his collegians posted recently. I got some feedback on that. So go sign up there and you’ll get the and go to phyllisschlafly.com and you can see all of the different speakers at our Collegian summit. We will take a break. We are back with John Schlafly. And Chris Chmielenski, in just a moment right here on. The Pro America Report back in a moment.
