October 14, 2021

October 14, 2021

Empty Shelves / Getty Images / Andrew Merry

On Thursday’s Mark Levin Show, due to President Biden’s policies, the wholesale inflation rate for September was 8.6% and was the highest rate of the year. Since it’s taking longer to get goods from overseas, there’s a situation where too many paper dollars are chasing after too few goods and this hurts all Americans. Inflation has gone up and the number of available jobs will go down. Consumers are panicking and hoarding whatever they can get their hands on for fear of the impending recession. Then, Biden’s actions to shut down the Keystone Pipeline slowed down oil production on federal land, so now gasoline is at a 7-year high and America went from being an exporter of energy to being an importer of foreign energy. Democrats are using their razor-thin majorities to fundamentally change the economy which will destroy the currency and ultimately the country. Later, a federal judge has ruled that the warden of the D.C jail holding some January 6th prisoners, be held in contempt of court and is being referred to the AG for a federal civil rights investigation. Afterward, the intricacies involved in producing a wooden pencil, as described in the i-pencil video, is proof that this supply chain mess that Biden has created will affect a lot more than just the ports and truckers. Finally, the candidate for Lt Governor of VA, Winsome Sears, calls in with an update on her race and shares her personal story of her time as a Marine and when she sold her car and traveled with a child seat on the back of her bicycle to get through college.

THIS IS FROM:

Just The News
Gas prices at 7-year high and rising as Biden wages offensive against domestic energy producers

Breitbart
White House Begs Oil Companies for Cheaper Fuel Days After Joe Biden Boasted About Suspending Drilling

Fox Business
The average new car price hit a record $45,000 in September

Rumble
Toymaker Hits Biden: Too Little Too Late To Save Christmas

Fox News
Federal judge finds DC jail warden in contempt, demands DOJ civil rights probe of Jan. 6 detainees

You Tube
I, Pencil: The Movie

The podcast for this show can be streamed or downloaded from the Audio Rewind page.

Image used with permission of Getty Images / Andrew Merry

Rough transcript of Hour 1

Hour 1 Segment 1

This is astounding. The wholesale inflation rate. For the month of September. Is eight point six percent. Compared with 12 months ago, that’s the largest increase since the 12 month. Since the 12 month collection, the 12 month comparison, I should say, was first calculated in 2010. Eight point six percent. Now, clearly, that’s going to affect retail rates and affect you. And so what’s happening here is because of the prolonged period of time to get goods. And materials. The price increases are being built into the prices that you’re trepang. As well as the supply and demand. Issue. That there’s not enough supply for the demand. As well as the trillions of dollars that have already been voted on. Already past. With way too many paper dollars chasing too few goods. All three of these elements. Are putting pressure. On inflation. And inflation is here. It’s going to be here for a while. I believe we’re headed for a recession, I believe, in fact, we’re at the beginning of a recession and what you’re going to see is stagflation, similar to what existed in the 1970s. Now, what do I mean by stagflation? You’re going to start to see the unemployment rate go up. You’re going to start to see inflation go higher than it is even now. And you’re going to see shortly the the cost of products continue to go up, inflation goes up, the cost of products go up. And joblessness goes up. The value of the currency, we’ve talked about this for a long time, the value of the dollar goes down. So if you’re lucky enough to have a job, what you’re going to find is you can buy less if you can get it. I went into the supermarket around here this morning just to take a walk through there and see what was happening. Once again, there’s a run on toilet paper. The big packages of toilet paper. There was a run on water. So these things are starting to happen, people are panicking, I get it. I get it. Gas prices. Are now at a seven year high and the rising. And they’re rising because. Not of those those freighters offshore. It’s because of what Joe Biden did the first day he walked into office. Cancel the Keystone pipeline that sent shivers through the entire pipeline industry. That sent shivers through the entire oil industry. He banned production oil production on federal land. The federal government controls about 30 percent, almost 30 percent of the land in this country, much of the wilderness. He reversed Trump on the. On the on the on the Alaska drilling. And so that’s been shut down. That is any new drilling. And so when you’re at war with the energy industry. Research and development stops, capital investment stops. Rig stop producing and I gave you those figures the other evening. That less than half of the rigs that were in production when Joe Biden took over are in production right now. We’re now a net importer of oil. Where we were a net exporter of oil 10 months ago. We had actually achieved, as I’ve said before, energy independence. Now, the price for a gallon of gasoline, even regular averages across the country, about three dollars and 60 cents. The price for premium and some cars require premium averages across the United States. Almost five dollars a gallon. Almost five dollars a gallon. They can’t blame their freighter’s for that. That’s Biden policy, that’s John Kerry policy, that’s AOC policy, that’s the Democrat Party. We’re going to move to electricity. Well, how do you get electricity? Hydroelectric plants, they don’t believe in building any more hydroelectric plants. OK, Cole, they don’t believe in Cole, OK, natural gas, they don’t believe in natural gas. Well, how do you create electricity? Solar doesn’t create electricity, it’s certainly not enough. So. They have hundreds of billions of dollars in the pipeline they want to spend for electric vehicles, the government, electric vehicles, electric school buses. You’re going to plug him in where you can get the electricity as the people of California who have brownouts and blackouts. And that’s coming next. And that’s coming next. When you have an administration that Brace’s a third world economic system, as opposed to the greatest economic system on the face of the earth, there’s not a single policy this administration has proposed. There’s not a single single policy in the trillions more they want to spend, trillions more they want to spend that is pro-growth. And notice, they don’t reverse course. Joe Biden could reverse course on fossil fuels, but he won’t. Because this isn’t about economics, we’ve talked about this, this is about ideology. This is about ideology and explain it in the American Marxism, this is about ideology, it’s not about how human nature works. It’s not about how economic systems work. It’s not about the nature of man. No, this is an ideological. You know, view that is imposed on the nation, whether we like it or not. When you have the price of fuel rising so fast, it affects every aspect of this economy. Every aspect in a highly negative way. They’ve already said. That home heating oil. This winter is going to be up 54 percent, it’s going to cost you more than half above what you paid last year to heat your homes. What are they going to do, blame the virus? It’s nothing to do with the virus. Nothing to do with the virus. Now, with this issue about gasoline prices, just the news points out. The Democrats, three and a half, five to Troian, whatever it is, doesn’t matter at this point, reconciliation bill. Includes an estimated six billion dollars worth of charges on U.S. oil and gas operators on federal lands. A further disincentive because they’re at war with fossil fuels. And there isn’t enough oil and gas supply to meet U.S. demand due to a combination of factors, including the Biden administration halting new leases on federal land, halting the Keystone pipeline, increasing regulatory burdens and other mesh measures that will take years to correct. Years to correct. Biden also eliminated low cost Canadian, Carol, from being processed by midcontinent, Gulf Coast and U.S. refiners. So he is severely hampered domestic production. We would have ample supply of oil and gas and commensurately, as they point out, just the news, lower costs at the pump, but for what Joe Biden did, but for what AOK demands and Bernie Sanders demands. Another proposal that they’ve put in place here. Is the length of the lease. Where oil companies are free to lease or have leased. From 10 years to five years, making the lease nearly moot, nobody is going to invest the amount of money. The amount of money necessary. To search and explore for fossil fuels for oil and natural gas on a five year lease. So intentionally, what they did, they’re. Is try to prevent any drilling whatsoever. On federal leases. And they succeeded. Now, this past week, the U.S. benchmark for crude oil, it’s called the West Texas Index, surpassed eighty one dollars a barrel. Another measure that Brent crude topped eighty four dollars a barrel. The price of crude oil accounts for roughly 67 percent of the per gallon gas price. At this time last year, it was 45 dollars a barrel, so it’s almost doubled. Almost double. We had almost the lowest in industry history. Last year, and now it has shot up. These are government policies. In California, of course, the price for a gallon of gasoline is higher than anywhere else in the country. Higher than anywhere else in the country. Regular is about four dollars and 50 cents a gallon right now. And even though these prices are astronomical, they’re going higher. They’re going hard because. The administration is not reversing policy, and even if they reversed policy today, it’s too late. For a good 10 to 12 month period, you just can’t snap your fingers and all of a sudden Riggs show up and there’s exploration and so forth. It’s been a disaster. And now what is the White House doing, as they point out at Breitbart, they’re begging oil companies for cheaper fuel. Days after Joe Biden boasted about suspending drilling, the White House confirmed they’re speaking with oil and gas producers in the United States about reducing rising energy prices just days after Biden boast about suspending drilling in Alaska. Biden, during a White House event on national monuments had suspended oil and gas drilling on federal lands in Alaska. In June, Biden suspended oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge after President Trump opened the area up to drilling in 2017. And as I said, he already halted new new oil and gas leasing and drilling permits on federal lands in January. So, of course, the price of crude oil has skyrocketed. They don’t want you to understand that this is Joe Biden, American Marxist policy. That’s why the price of fuel is skyrocketing, has nothing to do with freighters and container ships or anything of the sort. It has everything to do with the dismantling of our domestic energy system. A self-inflicted wound. By the moron who sits in the Oval Office and the Marxists with whom he surrounds himself. Remember what I say, this is a degrowth movement. And degrowth is what’s happening. Degrowth is what’s happening. I’ll be right back.

Hour 1 Segment 2

The new average price for a car in September hit forty five thousand dollars. According to the Fox business, new vehicle sales continue to decline, sell prices keep going up. They’re down 13 percent from the same period last year. The record high prices in September mostly result of the mix of vehicles sold mid-sized SUV sales jumped in September compared with August. The full size pickup share moved up as well. So what’s happening here, folks, is that the price? Of all products, absolute necessities and other products. Are going up and they’re going up fast and they’re going up big. This is why, by the way, I tell you, if you want to refinance or you’re getting a mortgage, now’s the time to do it. Because the Federal Reserve has kept those numbers. Low. And those numbers are going to go up. They’ve kept those rates low and those rates are going up. They can’t keep their foot on the gas pedal excuse me, on the on the brake forever. And they’re not going to I’ve seen this before. I saw this. During the the Carter years into the early Reagan years, when Reagan had to wrestle this to the ground, it was extraordinarily painful for the American people the first two years of the Reagan administration. And yet he stuck to it because he was a man of guts and knowledge and principle. He stuck to it, he invoker, and they finally wiped out the stagflation and inflation, but this is going to be more difficult. Because it’s not the end of the Biden administration, it’s the beginning of the Biden administration. And I suspect this is going to be a worse economic downturn than even in the 1970s. You have a Democrat Party that is so committed to further increasing inflation, they shouldn’t be spending another trillion dollars, let alone another two or three trillion dollars, they shouldn’t be sucking money out of the private sector with confiscatory taxes. That makes that make us uncompetitive with our foreign allies and our enemies, too, like communist China. And yet this is what they plan to do. It’s a disaster. Exactly. The wrong people are in charge automobile’s. The cost of automobiles now are significantly higher on average than they were just a year ago. More when I return.

Hour 1 Segment 3

The question is being raised here we are in the middle of October. This this entire issue of inflation, the supply chain. Shortages, it’s not new. It started up months ago, started up months ago in the automobile industry, the price of fuel has been rising. The price of food slowly but surely has been increasing in clothing and then you name it. So the question is, why did the Biden administration wait so long to do anything? To do anything, it seems like in the last few days, all of a sudden. They’ve ramped up. And they have ramped up all that much either. They haven’t ramped up all that much the 24/7 offloading of these containers 24/7. Why did they wait until now, because. The Teamsters in part their union. Didn’t want to do it. We have these so-called progressives, a.k.a. Marxists. Who run California? And they’re trying to push independent operators out of business. You look at this, this phony bill that they want to push, there’s all kinds of programs in their spending programs. But only if you’re a union shop. I’m not opposed to unions. What I am opposed to is the the opposition to competition. And there isn’t a fair playing field, that’s what I’m opposed to. And so people are going to suffer. And more small businesses are going to go out of business and on top of that, you have these mandates for people who are not vaccinated, many of whom have natural immunity and have the antibodies and therefore, as a matter of science, don’t need to be vaccinated. But they’re not differentiating between those individuals and others. At all. And now they’re trying to say that little kids five years old and up get ready states to vaccinate them to the science, doesn’t support that in the least. Not in the least. Now, what is the outcome here? Well, here’s an example, CEO of MGA Entertainment, toymaker Isaac Larin. Was on Fox today. Here’s what he had to say. Go with all due respect to President Biden, what he just ordered is too little, too late. He’s only 72 days left to Christmas. And whether the courts are open 24 hours a day or 48 hours a day, you cannot get labor. If you cannot get labor, you cannot get trucks. You cannot get the merchandise out. And even if you get them out, it’s going to be too late for Christmas. So I’m just going to show you one item. This disingenuous surprise movie magic will be the number one toy this holiday. We can only get about 60 percent of the product demand out to store 60 percent. That means a lot of kids are not going to be able to get their local movie magic surprise under the Christmas tree or Hanukkah tree this year. So I think I think directive is too little, too late. And frankly, the political gimmick, a political gimmick. Furthermore, ladies and gentlemen, the Democrats insisted on extending. Unemployment insurance and. Adding federal dollars to the state. Unemployment checks. Extending them and increasing the amount of money and there are people all over the country. Small businesses all over the country making the point that you’re going to pay people more money not to work. Then you are to work, we can’t compete against the federal government when it comes to these salaries. Furthermore, people will take more money and not go to work, and you remember? The difficulty coming out of this pandemic that restaurants had, the grocery stores had that that everybody was having. Finding the labor, finding the employees to fill the slots. Well, this has gone on, ladies and gentlemen, up to and including the beginning of this month. This month. And so now you have individuals who are out of the workforce. Who are out of the workforce? The workforce participation rate dropped by about four million. That’s the reason the unemployment number went down. Only one hundred ninety five thousand people were newly employed last month, one hundred ninety five thousand. You know what that comes to, Mr. Producer? 4,000 a state. Put it in practical terms for 4,000 people newly hired per state, if you just divide it by 50. That’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. And so what the Democrats want to do in their proposals. Is expand the welfare state. Expand the welfare state. pre-K through. Free, free child care. Free family leave. Expand Medicare while Medicare is going broke. Free community college. Wipe out the debt for people who took student loans. Redistribution of wealth, massive increases in taxes. On any individual, any family, any small business that makes over 400,000 dollars a year, almost every small business grosses over 400,000 dollars a year. This is absolutely shocking. So there’s more to come should they succeed in imposing their will. 50 50 in the Senate, a three vote majority in the House, the smallest, the thinnest of majorities that we haven’t seen anything like this in a century. They think they have a supermajority, they are destroying our economic system, they are destroying the economy, they are destroying your jobs and your pay scales and your currency. When you destroy a currency, you destroy everything. People on pensions. People on pensions. Their pensions become worth less. Your savings accounts. Your money becomes worth less. You can’t buy what you used to be able to buy, even if it were available. Because a dollar is not worth a dollar anymore, maybe it’s worth 90 cents. In order to to respond to that, retailers increase the prices. And so you get this cycle. This cycle of decline. When you watch Joe Biden. You see a man who’s shuffling around, a man who’s not with it. A man who just keeps thinking of his legacy. You see a man who is the plaything of the the radical Marxists with whom he’s surrounded himself. The people who are really running this government, you don’t hear their names, Susan Rice, Ron Klain, although he blew it today, won’t mention that in passing later since it’s been. But I’ll mention it now. Ron Klain retweeted tweet. In which the tweet says. That all this economic dislocation that you see that you’re experiencing, whether it’s toilet paper, automobiles or the price of food or whatever it is. That’s really for the high classes, the high class people doesn’t really affect anybody else. Now, this is incredible, folks, this is absolutely incredible, the people who are affected most. Are you? The middle class, lower middle class. Even the poor aren’t as affected as the middle class and the lower middle class given food stamps and all the other benefits. This is a war on the middle class. I’ve told you this many times. Although tax the hell out of the rich and so forth, but in the end, it’s about you. They can achieve what they want to achieve the destruction of our economic system, pulling it down and destroying it like they do monuments, like they do free speech, like they have our classrooms. They reject the industrial revolution and all the benefit that’s come from it. In the past, I’ve said to you. You go into a supermarket. Row after row after row of food, food from all over the world, different types of food, 80 percent fat. Ground beef, 95 percent fat free ground beef, you know, that sort of thing, all kinds of cuts of meat. Shrimp, popcorn, shrimp, large shrimp, cooked shrimp, frozen shrimp. You go into these stores, 40 different types of bread. Right, 500 different types of wine. A hundred different types of beer, seltzer water. It’s absolutely fantastic. You go into these stores. Potato chips. With vinegar, with salt, with sea salt ruffled, not ruffled. Look at the yogurt. The butter. The ice cream. Look at all the choices we have. As of tonight, you have less choices. You have fewer choices. Look at the toilet paper, double ply, triple ply. Wow. There’s less of it. Tonight, as I speak to you. Capitalism is what filled those shelves you did. Marxism is what will empty those shelves. It’s been tried and every time it’s been tried. The result is suffering and impoverishment. Suffering and impoverishment. When you hear these people talk about centralizing economic decisions, massive tax increases, maybe not even for you, for other people, redistribution of wealth, it creates supply chain problems, production problems, pricing problems, labor problems, because none of that is in the calculation of the ideologues. Only the people on the ground who do this work. Who hire people who make the food. Who harvest the fields, only they can, no. How to do what they do. Not people from Chuck Schumer’s district or people from Nancy Pelosi’s district and so forth and so on. There aren’t many oil rigs in Manhattan. Union Square. Aren’t many farms in those at locations? Many. How much production? Quite frankly, this isn’t a putdown, it’s reality. So when you have politicians who have absolutely no private sector experience Pelosi, Schumer, Biden, Harris, on and on and on. And they represent areas of the country that are not in the production phase of the economic system. That’s not to say people aren’t working hard in the economic system. They’re not in the production phase, the fossil fuels of foods and so forth. Their decisions are ideological when you centralize decisions in the government. The decisions are ideological, they’re not economic. I’ll be right back.

Hour 1 Segment 4

Now, ladies and gentlemen, when you look at what’s occurred in Afghanistan and we still have American citizens there, we don’t know what’s happening to them. The administration doesn’t tell us as if they don’t exist anymore. We still have tens of thousands of patriotic Afghans over there who fought with us. Administration doesn’t tell us what’s happening with them. Obviously, they’re not getting people out or they be, you know, celebrating their brilliance. When you look at the southern border, the intentional efforts to keep that border open in the influx of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens. When you look at how they coronavirus has been mismanaged under this president, he’s had three vaccines and therapeutics, none of which were invented during his presidency. And more people have died on his watch than than all of last year and all of last year. And now you see what’s happening to the economy, there’s a pattern here and there’s two points. Not only is there an issue of incompetence, there’s an issue of ideology. The ideology is an incompetent ideology, the ideology is an impossibility. And so everything they touch is a disaster, and as a footnote with Iran, they intend to lift all sanctions against Iran. Iran is as close as ever to having nuclear weapons, and Israel may have to attack Iran on its own now. So Afghanistan, you have the open borders, you have the virus. You have, in my view, a recession now. Which will lead to stagflation, a disaster. There’s going to be other things breaking open, what you see as I’m talking about Iran and so forth. Nothing’s going well, nothing this administration does is going well, and now they have their their eyes set on the Supreme Court. Nothing’s going well. And so this is this is quite crucial to understand what’s taking place. To understand that everything this president and his administration have touched have gone south, have gone absolutely sour, to say the least. Disasters. Disaster. When you put in man in office who is not mentally competent to be president of the United States. And yet is ideologically driven for legacy. And he surrounds himself with individuals clearly not chosen by him, who as radical as possible. This is what you get. I fear what’s happening to this country. I fear what’s going to happen with communist China and Taiwan, I fear what’s going to happen with Israel and Iran. I fear three more years of open borders and the consequences for town after town and city after city in this country. I fear what’s going to happen to our economy. Under a president and an administration in the Democrat Party that rejects capitalism, how are you going to redistribute wealth if you don’t create wealth? How are you going to redistribute wealth if you don’t create wealth? This is the problem the American Marxists and the Democrat Party have. They don’t know how to create wealth or they reject the creation of wealth while they’re busy redistributing it. I’ll be right back.