"Inflation over the past seven months has hovered between 8% and 9%. These are the worst consumer-price-index numbers since the early 1980s. The last time there was an election with inflation this high, Ronald Reagan won a landslide against incumbent Jimmy Carter, and the Republicans won massive gains in Congress.

"Americans have good reason to worry about runaway prices of groceries, gas at the pump, health insurance and utility bills. The 'essentials' that all Americans have to buy every week are up closer to 15% to 30%. Inflation averaged just 2% during Trump's four years in office and only 1.5% the day Biden entered the Oval Office. The claim by the Biden White House last year that inflation was just a 'high-class problem' or was 'transitory' today sounds laughable. Even more out of touch was Biden's recent declaration that the economy is 'strong as hell.' Maybe that's true inside the bubble of recession-proof Washington, DC. But not so much in the rest of the country. ...

"I and others on these pages in recent weeks have pointed out that when you have roughly 8.5% inflation and less than 5.5% wage growth, the real take-home pay to workers has shrunk by about $4,000 for the average family in the last year. This is the Biden inflation tax -- the cruelest tax of all because it socks the poor and middle class right in the nose. Then on top of that you have the $30,000-plus reduction in the value of average 401(k) plans for tens of millions of Americans because the stock market has fallen in value and inflation is reducing the value of any small gains that Americans may have experienced in the last 20 months. ...

"Economists and business leaders are almost unanimously saying America is going to drive off the road into an economic ditch of recession. Hello! For most Americans we are already in a recession. The idea that things are expected to get worse is a hair-raising proposition for the half of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck."

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"For Sanna Shere's father, buying and running his first Southern California Burger King more than 30 years ago was his entryway to the American Dream.

"The fast-food restaurant the Pakistani immigrant purchased was rundown and struggling. Shere said her dad, Kaiser Shere, invested every penny he had into the restaurant. 'It was really low volume, low performing. People thought he was crazy,' she said of her father.

"But his hard work paid off. The restaurant became one of the region's highest-volume Burger Kings, Sanna Shere said. A few years later, her dad bought a second location. Then he added a few more. When Shere moved back from New York a decade ago, she helped her dad and her brother grow the business to include 21 Burger Kings with close to 500 employees. ...

"That ability to grow has been stymied in recent years by increasingly stringent state regulations, and an increasing minimum wage that has sent the business's labor costs soaring. Now, the future of the Sheres' business is in jeopardy because of a new state law -- the so-called Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act, or FAST Act -- that threatens to fast-track even more burdensome regulations and a large mandatory wage increase on the industry, and to upend franchise business models across the Golden State and possibly beyond. The measure, the latest in a long string of far-left policies implemented in the state, will make it harder for entrepreneurial Californians to buy and grow their own fast-food businesses. But its impacts will likely be felt in industries that have no connection to fast food.

"Assembly Bill 257, narrowly approved by the California legislature on August 29, and signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on Labor Day, allows for the creation of a new, ten-member, unelected Fast Food Council specifically to micromanage the state's fast-food industry. The council would have broad powers to impose new rules and regulations on thousands of fast-food and counter-service restaurants, including the ability to raise the minimum wage at most of California's fast-food restaurants next year from $15 to $22 an hour -- a nearly 50 percent jump, with cost-of-living adjustments each year after that."

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"The voting rights organization founded by Stacey Abrams spent more than $25 million over two years on legal fees, mostly on a single case, with the largest amount going to the self-described boutique law firm of the candidate’s campaign chairwoman.

"Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, Abrams' close friend who chaired her gubernatorial campaign both in 2018 and her current bid to unseat Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, is one of two named partners in Lawrence & Bundy, a small firm of fewer than two dozen attorneys.

"The firm received $9.4 million from Abrams' group, Fair Fight Action, in 2019 and 2020, the last years for which federal tax filings are available. Lawrence-Hardy declined to comment on how much her firm has collected from Fair Fight Action in 2021 and 2022 -- years in which Fair Fight Action v. Raffensperger, for which Lawrence-Hardy was lead counsel, had most of its courtroom activity.

"Fair Fight Action has maintained that the suit -- which ended last month when a federal judge ruled against the group on all three remaining claims -- served an important role in drawing attention to voting inequities. But some outside the group questioned both the level of expenditures devoted to a single, largely unsuccessful legal action and the fact that such a large payout went to the firm of Abrams' close friend and campaign chair. Those concerns were heightened by the fact that Abrams' national campaign against voter suppression galvanized the Democratic Party, many of whose top donors helped fill its coffers."

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"An appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding mechanism is unconstitutional, in a victory for lenders that have targeted the agency's structure in a years-long bid to tamp down regulation.

"A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the design of the CFPB violated the Constitution because it receives funding through the Federal Reserve, rather than appropriations legislation passed by Congress. ...

"The judges also vacated a 2017 small-dollar lending rule targeted by the payday lending advocates who brought the case -- the Community Financial Services Association of America and the Consumer Service Alliance of Texas.

"'Congress's decision to abdicate its appropriations power under the Constitution, i.e., to cede its power of the purse to the Bureau, violates the Constitution's structural separation of powers,' the judges wrote."

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"As a leader in political polling and election coverage for two decades, RealClearPolitics is announcing an initiative to improve public trust and confidence in political polling. ...

"There have been many news stories over the last several months questioning whether polling is broken in the United States. While there are certainly challenges in the polling industry, it is not entirely accurate to suggest polling is broken. There are many quality pollsters and media outlets that are doing excellent work in a constantly changing technological and political environment. However, there are also pollsters and news organizations that are doing less-than-stellar work and, unfortunately, many of the polls from these organizations receive a disproportionate amount of attention.

"To help address this problem, in the coming weeks RealClearPolitics will be rolling out a beta version ranking polling organizations. RCP will rank pollsters by their performance in recent elections, and will of course evaluate their performance in the 2022 mid-term election in just under a month. RCP's goal here is simple. Accuracy is the foundational bedrock of public trust. To that end we will be evaluating pollsters almost exclusively on one metric -- accuracy in reflecting the actual results."

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"It was already clear after Georgia's primary election set new turnout records this spring, but it bears repeating once again: Democrats don't tell the truth about voting rights. ...

"Democratic activists went to great lengths to plant stories in the media, which lazy journalists dutifully filed, claiming that Georgia's new voting law was a new attempt to suppress the black vote. ...

"With this much-maligned law, Georgia's legislature had actually made voting more accessible to its citizens than it had been previously. They also made voting more accessible than it is in New York, New Jersey, Biden's Delaware, and a variety of other states that Democrats would never try to pretend are Jim Crow states. Georgia legislators had actually expanded early voting and made it easier for almost anyone in the state to cast a valid vote.

"And now, once again, the results are speaking for themselves. Raffensperger announced on Tuesday that Georgia voters just set a new record for first-day early voting in a midterm election, with nearly twice as many people voting on Monday as had done so on the first day of early voting in 2018. Georgians are on pace to set a new record for midterm turnout in 2022 and are voting at levels that rival turnout for the 2020 presidential election.

"If anybody is trying to suppress the vote, they are doing a pretty lousy job of it. But of course, this was also true in 2018, another extremely high-turnout election whose results Democrats still deny."

Read the entire article here.

"Do yourself a favor: Don't listen to the rhetoric coming out of the mouth of Chinese President -- more like dictator for life -- Xi Jinping these days.

"Sure, he is talking a big game about China someday reunifying with Taiwan -- emphasizing using force if necessary -- and how he wants to build Beijing's military into a world-class power as fast as possible. In fact, in his address to the Communist Party's 20th National Congress, Xi seems set to be doubling down on his goal of making China the predominant military power in Asia and eventually a global military power as well.

"But we should be clear: Xi has been saying the same things over and over for nearly a decade now, and all of that is old news.

"What is different now, however, is that the Chinese leader finally has the economy -- a gross domestic product worth more than $16 trillion -- and foundational military capabilities to back up his bluster."

Read the entire article here.

"The economy shrank during the first half of 2022. In March, the Federal Reserve began ratcheting up interest rates to squash inflation. The hikes haven't resulted in price stability. But they have led to the highest mortgage rates in 20 years, growing volatility in debt markets, and the increasing likelihood of a prolonged recession and financial crisis. National Economic Council director Brian Deese likes to say that the U.S. economy is 'in a period of transition.' The transition is from bad to worse.

"By subsidizing demand while restricting supply, President Biden has revived the economic maladies that afflicted the American economy when he entered public life a half century ago. Biden has turned gold into dross and, amazingly, expects to be rewarded for it. 'The president and I were talking at lunch today about this,' Vice President Kamala Harris said in a recent interview with the Nation magazine. 'We are so proud -- and I hope I don't give off any bravado in saying this -- but we are so proud that we will end up being the most pro-labor administration probably ever.'

"Sorry, madame vice president, but your bravado is showing. The unions might be happy. The other 90 percent of the workforce is not. Expect to hear from them in November."

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"Scores on the ACT college admissions test by this year's high school graduates hit their lowest point in more than 30 years -- the latest evidence of the enormity of learning disruption during the pandemic.

"The class of 2022's average ACT composite score was 19.8 out of 36, marking the first time since 1991 that the average score was below 20. What's more, an increasing number of high school students failed to meet any of the subject-area benchmarks set by the ACT -- showing a decline in preparedness for college-level coursework.

"The test scores, made public in a report Wednesday, show 42% of ACT-tested graduates in the class of 2022 met none of the subject benchmarks in English, reading, science and math, which are indicators of how well students are expected to perform in corresponding college courses.

"In comparison, 38% of test takers in 2021 failed to meet any of the benchmarks."

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"The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday slashed its global growth outlook for next year, warning the world economy is headed for 'stormy waters' and that there is a growing risk of a painful worldwide recession if major central banks fumble the fight against inflation.

"The Washington-based institution said in its latest World Economic Outlook that global gross domestic product will still grow by 3.2% this year, but now anticipates it will slow sharply to just 2.7% in 2023. That is down 0.2 percentage points from its previous estimate and is a marked decline from its estimate of 3.8% at the beginning of the year, highlighting just how much the global economy has weakened in recent months.

"Inflation could remain elevated for longer than previously expected, according to the IMF, which forecast prices peaking later this year and declining from 8.8% in 2022 to 6.5% in 2023.

'The worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession,' the report said"

Read the entire article here.