Also on today’s menu:
Salisbury Man Posing As Trooper Charged With Stalking
Nikki Haley To End Presidential Campaign
PepsiCo provides a good example of why grocery prices are so much higher these days. The company had net revenues of $23.4 billion as of October last year, after having raised prices for seven consecutive quarters, including an 11% increase in July. The higher prices brought sales volumes down by 2.5%, but PepsiCo called that volume decline strategic to its goal of increasing stockholder dividends. The company claims the smaller package sizes are designed “to meet consumer demand for convenience and portion control.”
Coca-Cola has adopted a similar strategy to boost profits.
Without mentioning specific companies, President Joe Biden Jr. announced new initiatives to help consumers on March 5, saying, “The pandemic disrupted the supply chains. … It drove up costs on everything from smartphones to automobiles. But … now those costs … have come down, but the prices haven’t come down. They’ve stayed up. They’ve stayed high, and the profits have soared. And it’s time for those prices to come back down. … In the last year alone, inflation came down by two thirds. We have one of the lowest inflation rates in the world. … But even as supply chains are back to normal, some companies are still not passing along the savings to their consumers. Many corporations are raising their prices to pad their profits, charging folks more and more for less and less.”
He announced a new “strike force” on unfair and illegal pricing, led by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, to crack down on companies “who break the law while keeping prices high for American consumers.”
The efforts include closing a loophole that has allowed the credit card industry to collect billions of dollars in “junk fees” such imposing late fees as high as $32, five times the cost of collecting those payments. The Biden Administration is limiting those fees to $8, which should Americans an estimated $10 billion each year. Technology has brought down costs down, but banks have raised interest rates, “squeezing American families out of an extra $25 billion in interest charges last year alone”.
“Wages are up more than prices,” Biden said. “Unemployment has reached historic lows. Families are finally getting a little breathing room [but p]rices are still too high, and they shouldn’t be this high.”
The efforts extend to helping family farms compete with the large conglomerates that control the livestock and poultry markets.
Discussion: The high cost of food is one of the main complaints of everyday Americans, and they blame President Biden, while the real culprits are the monopolistic giants who are seeking only profits. Shrinking the product is not for consumer convenience but a way of squeezing more money out of the product they do have. There is nothing wrong with seeking a profit, and $23 billion spread across all of Pepsi’s holdings is not as outrageous as it may appear on its face, but it still is a huge profit that forces people to ration what they buy — what “portion control” really means.
Salisbury Man Posing As Trooper Charged With Stalking
Jerry Williams, 46, of Salisbury has been charged with impersonating a police officer, a Class B felony, as well as misdemeanors for harassment and stalking and violation-level charges of criminal trespass and loitering/prowling.
A woman contacted State Police on February 25 to report that she had been receiving text messages from someone claiming to be a captain in the State Police, saying she was being monitored and seeking personal information. While receiving the texts, her her residential security camera showed an unidentified person lurking around her house and looking in her window.
Troopers responding to the call were unable to locate anyone but, during the course of their investigation, Trooper Tyler Griffin was able to identify Williams and obtained an arrest warrant.
Discussion: Police say the investigation remains active and ongoing. They initially withheld Williams’ name “in efforts to protect the privacy and identity of the victim”.
Nikki Haley To End Presidential Campaign
Former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley plans to make a formal announcement at 10 a.m. that she is suspending her bid for the Republican nomination for president. She is the last major candidate to challenge former president Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.
Her campaign sent an email early this morning to announce the press conference near Charleston, South Carolina, a day after her lackluster showing on Super Tuesday. Haley won in Vermont, but lost in more than a dozen states and territories holding presidential preference primary contests on March 5.
Haley had pledged to stay in the race even after losing to Trump in the first few states, including her home state of South Carolina on February 24.
Discussion: The New York Times paints Haley’s loss as a huge victory for Donald Trump, but other commentators have noted that many of those casting votes for Haley would not commit to supporting Trump if he won the nomination, and independent voters are divided on whether to support Trump or Biden in the general election. As Trump’s legal problems mount and his fascist rhetoric continues, his support may fall away. On the other hand, note that the Republican National Committee is soon to be led by Trump supporters who want the party to pay his legal expenses, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is meeting with Trump at Mar-A-Lago this week and can put up the money Trump needs to meet his bonding requirements, and Elon Musk also has money to put behind Trump’s attempt to end democracy.