Category Archives: gurvey

Inflation!

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Grocery prices

Go ahead. Tell me the higher prices we see staring back at us every day at the grocery store and the gas pump are just a temporary thing. I dare you.

The latest inflation report shows that price pressures heated up again in May, with the Consumer Price Index rising 0.5% month‑over‑month and 4.2% year‑over‑year, the highest annual rate since April 2023. That 4.2% figure matched economists’ expectations, but it still marks a clear acceleration from April’s 3.8% pace. The monthly increase was driven heavily by energy costs, which jumped 3.9% in May and are up 23.5% over the past year, reflecting the ongoing impact of the Iran conflict on global oil markets. Gasoline alone surged 7% in May and more than 40% compared with a year ago, accounting for the majority of the overall CPI increase.

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Trump Meets the Press

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This goes on my list of most memorable television interviews. And I have seen many.

Donald Trump sat for an interview with Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s Meet the Press. I have no idea why. Welker announced that she and her crew had been invited to follow Trump to a rally in Wisconsin, where Trump addressed farmers, one of his most supportive constituent groups. Why they continue to overwhelmingly support him is something else I don’t understand. His policies have crippled their export markets and put them on government subsidies, welfare, and threatened their livelihood. Still, he found himself addressing a friendly crowd. Then he sat down with Welker in a barn in the midst of a pouring rainstorm. As the interviewed progressed, the storm moved inside.

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Economic Conundrum

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The May Employment Situation Report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) handily beat expectations, with the U.S. economy adding 172,000 nonfarm payroll jobs. Economists had forecasted a much more modest gain of roughly 80,000 to 85,000 jobs, making this a significant upside surprise.

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If It Ain’t Broke…

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The maxim reads, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Advice which generally means don’t try to fix something that works. The odds are you’ll mess it up. In the context of the CBS blockbuster newsmagazine Sixty Minutes, it seems to apply. Unless of course, fixing something broken is not the goal of the new owners of CBS.

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It’s Still the Kennedy Center

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A federal judge ruled today that Donald Trump’s name must be removed from the Kennedy Center. The decision says the Trump appointed Kennedy Center Board acted illegally when it voted to add Trump’s name to the Center. The court also ordered a halt to a plan to temporarily close the center for renovations.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper sided with Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), a member of the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees, who challenged both the name change and the proposed two-year closure. Her lawsuit, filed last December, argued that “[b]ecause Congress named the center by statute, changing the Kennedy Center’s name requires an act of Congress.”

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Memorial Day

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Memorial Day is a day for reflection. The day honors the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Observed every year on the last Monday of May, Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day in a nod to the tradition of placing flowers or other decorative displays at gravesites.

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Funerals at CBS

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There are two funerals on tap this week at CBS, Inc., the company where I spent the first decade of my professional career. When I joined it in 1974, it had recently changed its name from the Columbia Broadcasting System to better reflect its position as a major media company, not just a broadcaster. Its four core lines of business were Broadcasting (TV and radio), Records (music), Publishing (books and magazines), and Musical Instruments/Toys.

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