Monday: Finland PM and the party
Tuesday: Mexico needs to get very serious about violence
Wednesday: Russia promoting motherhood and more babies
Thursday: Talk of recession
Friday: 15 dead journalists in Mexico
Saturday: Business owners vs local government
Sunday: Dr. King's speech 1963
...and other stories...
Why did it take so long for this movement to happen? I recall hearing about some Baltimore business owners writing a letter to the mayor and demanding law and order. I have good news from the Bay Area:
The Castro Merchants Association sent a letter to San Francisco city officials saying they plan to stop paying taxes if The City doesn't do more to address burglaries, vandalism, people with behavioral health problems and unhoused people camping on the sidewalks in front of businesses and residences.
Terrance Alan is co-president of the association and owner of Flore Dispensary and Cafe Flore.
He says many shops have been targeted by vandals and his businesses' windows have been smashed 11 times. He says there are also several dozen people in the area who have been unhoused for years, some a decade or more.
"Every day we wake up and have to help people on the street. We have to clean up feces on the street. We have to clear our people from doorways, so we can open our businesses. It's not fair," said Alan.
It's about time. At the same time, how did local governments allow this to happen?
Back to my aforementioned comment about Baltimore. In 2021, we went to see my ailing mother in Maryland. It was also an opportunity to catch up with some of my college friends from that time in my life. I was appalled at the state of the city, the garbage, the sense of lawlessness everywhere and the frustration in the eyes of an under-staffed police force.
As for San Francisco, I spoke with a friend who went to San Francisco and he couldn't believe the general decay of a once wonderful city. He did not like Los Angeles either.
So it's great to see that business owners are drawing the line. Put the issue on the lap of the elected officials and use your taxes as a weapon. After all, you are paying for the police and it's political class tying their hands.
Thumbs up for these business owners in Castro.
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We wrote a few days ago about homicides in Mexico. Let me bring you another side of the story via my friends at Pulse Mexico:
Reporter and columnist Fredid Román Román was gunned down as he left his home in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, on Monday, Aug. 23, making him the 15th journalist to be killed in Mexico this year.
Román Román was a reporter for various media outlets in the coastal Mexican state of Guerrero, as well as the owner and editor of the newspaper La Realidad, which he stopped publishing several years ago.
At the time of his death, he was publishing his column, “The Written Reality,” in various media and on his social networks.
On the day of his death, he published a column on criticizing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) for his mishandling of the investigation of the unsolved Ayotzinapa case surrounding 43 missing students in Guerrero in 2014.
Román Román is the second reporter assassinated during the administration of Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado Pineda, who took office in October 2021. The first was the photojournalist Alfredo Cardoso EcheverrÃa in Acapulco.
Fifteen journalists dead in Mexico is today's headline. #14 was killed in Sonora not long ago. And the story repeats itself!
My friends south of the border explain it this way:
First, many journalists are doing journalism. They are covering tough stories and drawing the ire of criminal elements; and
Second, most of them are unguarded. They are easy targets for those who follow them home or find them around town.
Yes, these journalists are doing good work and losing their lives in the process.
A few weeks ago, the White House et al assured us that two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth was the old school way of measuring the economy. No recession, they assured is. Trust us because we know and you don't, or something like that.
Well, let's see how they explain this economic story. This is from CNN Business:
Business activity at private US companies in early August dropped off at some of the sharpest rates seen since the beginning of the pandemic as rising interest rates and high inflation crimped consumer spending, according to data released Tuesday.
The latest S&P Global preliminary flash composite purchasing managers index, or PMI, registered a level of 45 as of August 22, down from 47.7 in July.
The rate at which business activity slowed was the fastest recorded since May 2020 when the pandemic shutdowns first took hold, according to S&P Global. This marks five consecutive months that the activity index has fallen and the second consecutive month that it has been in contraction territory. Levels above 50 indicate expansion, while levels below represent a contraction is occurring, according to S&P Global.
Maybe the White House will call it "the monkey pox recession" and tell everyone to put on a mask when they are driving their electric cars.
Another report appeared today. Frankly, it was not shocking because I see that "For sale" signs are not going down as quickly as they did months ago. This is about home sales today:
Only 511,000 new homes were sold last month, at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate, down from a revised 585,000 in June. That's the lowest sales number since January 2016. A year ago, 726,000 newly constructed homes were sold.
Again, I did not need a report to confirm that slowdown. I remember "for sale" signs up on Monday and gone the next day. We've had two signs up around here and they've been up for a couple of weeks.
The recession talk gets louder when we see this in the news:
Best Buy, Ford Motor, HBO Max, Peloton, Shopify, Re/Max, Walmart and Wayfair are among the firms that announced layoffs in recent weeks. Meanwhile, 50% of firms are anticipating a reduction in overall headcount, while 52% foresee instituting a hiring freeze and 44% rescinding job offers, according to a PwC survey of 722 U.S. executives fielded in early August.
So let's get this straight: layoffs, drop in home sales and business activity is down. It looks like a recession to me. I'm sure that the White House Press Secretary will put some spin on this reality later.
