By Daniel Nardini
The ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids in Chicago are having a chilling effect in a number of Latino neighborhoods. One person told me that Little Village has almost become a ghost town with people staying at home and unwilling to go out for fear ICE might arrest them and take them away. What this has done is very telling: businesses in Little Village are suffering from these immigration raids. This could in the not-so-long run force family-owned stores to shut down and cause a catastrophic domino effect of destroying Little Village as a whole. How does this help a community that has barely survived the Covid pandemic a few years back?
But in my view, all of these immigration raids in Chicago and other blue state cities and metropolitan areas is sending a clear message from a Republican-dominated federal government: we want to break you and take total control over the country. But lost in the whole strong-armed coercive use of federal government functions are some important things promised by the Republicans in general and U.S. President Donald Trump in particular that are not being met. In fact, these promises are quickly being forgotten because truth of the matter is they really cannot be delivered. Here is the most important of these so far broken promises. Inflation. Goods and services are still climbing at a high rate. Homeowners insurance shows no sign of stopping let alone going down. Basic utilities such as phone, water, gas and electricity have certainly not gone down, and have actually risen since the beginning of the year. What exactly is the federal government doing about any of this?
Food prices. They have not changed, and in fact are still steadily rising. A box of cereal at the cheapest that I have seen is $2,29. But these are non-brand name cereals. Brand name cereals such as Post, Kellogg’s and General Mills are much higher. A lot of Americans depend on cereals as a basic food staple, so how are they going to afford cereals when the price keeps rising? Egg prices are just as telling, and you might as well pay gold for milk. These are basic staples in the American diet, and all the talk about ICE raids and killing all federal funding to the blue states to bend blue states like Illinois to President Trump’s will cannot change the food prices. Trump campaigned on the cost of food, and this single factor was probably what got him elected. Where is the promise to lower food prices now? Truth be told, no one in the Republican-dominated federal government has any control to change the prices of food because these are determined by market forces. If former President Joe Biden could do nothing about it, what can President Trump do?
Healthcare reform. Dead silence. There is nothing on this. Americans pay the most ridiculous prices for basic health care compared to all other industrialized countries. If anything, President Trump is now trying to choke Illinois of funds to bend the state to his will. He has already cut off funds to Illinois for Medicaid even though this violates U.S. Congress funding and agreements with Illinois for such funding. Trump is using his executive orders as royal decrees to cut funding even though this violates all kinds of laws. But then a man with 34 felony convictions could care less about rule of law and humanity. To the Republican Party, I tell them that talk is cheap, and theirs is the cheapest of all about all the promises they made on the campaign trail.
Helping American businesses. Nothing Trump is doing is helping Illinois businesses. All Trump has done is try to tariff everything and every country. But there are problems with this. American businesses need raw materials for making things, and tariffs on other countries mean that goods and parts used as components to make American products could automatically make them expensive to insanely expensive. Tariffs will start not only making imported products more expensive but American products as well by this same logic. But the whole point of what the Republican Party is doing by allowing Trump to do what he wants is to shift the narrative and make it look like they are doing something when in effect they are doing little to nothing about the most basic things that affect Americans the most. This is smoke and mirrors at its worst.
Smoke and Mirrors
By Daniel Nardini
But in my view, all of these immigration raids in Chicago and other blue state cities and metropolitan areas is sending a clear message from a Republican-dominated federal government: we want to break you and take total control over the country. But lost in the whole strong-armed coercive use of federal government functions are some important things promised by the Republicans in general and U.S. President Donald Trump in particular that are not being met. In fact, these promises are quickly being forgotten because truth of the matter is they really cannot be delivered. Here is the most important of these so far broken promises. Inflation. Goods and services are still climbing at a high rate. Homeowners insurance shows no sign of stopping let alone going down. Basic utilities such as phone, water, gas and electricity have certainly not gone down, and have actually risen since the beginning of the year. What exactly is the federal government doing about any of this?
Food prices. They have not changed, and in fact are still steadily rising. A box of cereal at the cheapest that I have seen is $2,29. But these are non-brand name cereals. Brand name cereals such as Post, Kellogg’s and General Mills are much higher. A lot of Americans depend on cereals as a basic food staple, so how are they going to afford cereals when the price keeps rising? Egg prices are just as telling, and you might as well pay gold for milk. These are basic staples in the American diet, and all the talk about ICE raids and killing all federal funding to the blue states to bend blue states like Illinois to President Trump’s will cannot change the food prices. Trump campaigned on the cost of food, and this single factor was probably what got him elected. Where is the promise to lower food prices now? Truth be told, no one in the Republican-dominated federal government has any control to change the prices of food because these are determined by market forces. If former President Joe Biden could do nothing about it, what can President Trump do?
Healthcare reform. Dead silence. There is nothing on this. Americans pay the most ridiculous prices for basic health care compared to all other industrialized countries. If anything, President Trump is now trying to choke Illinois of funds to bend the state to his will. He has already cut off funds to Illinois for Medicaid even though this violates U.S. Congress funding and agreements with Illinois for such funding. Trump is using his executive orders as royal decrees to cut funding even though this violates all kinds of laws. But then a man with 34 felony convictions could care less about rule of law and humanity. To the Republican Party, I tell them that talk is cheap, and theirs is the cheapest of all about all the promises they made on the campaign trail.
Helping American businesses. Nothing Trump is doing is helping Illinois businesses. All Trump has done is try to tariff everything and every country. But there are problems with this. American businesses need raw materials for making things, and tariffs on other countries mean that goods and parts used as components to make American products could automatically make them expensive to insanely expensive. Tariffs will start not only making imported products more expensive but American products as well by this same logic. But the whole point of what the Republican Party is doing by allowing Trump to do what he wants is to shift the narrative and make it look like they are doing something when in effect they are doing little to nothing about the most basic things that affect Americans the most. This is smoke and mirrors at its worst.