Politics & Stuff

[CucurellatheCat 23]

Just now, Vesper said:

You really are a typical RW dull knife.

The data was misrepresented and therefore not valid.

Go back to rubbing one out with your Farage doll.

oufff thats some more hurty words and hate

The hypocrisy!

Right winger yeah?!! i voted lib dem last election you bandit lmao

[CucurellatheCat 23]

9 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Blair, the neoliberal 3rd Way centrist is a now a lefty????

LOLOL

That is gaslighting at an olympian level.

 

According to a report by the Centre for Migration Control, based on MoJ data obtained via FOI requests, foreign nationals accounted for approximately 23% of sexual offense convictions (including rape) in England and Wales between 2021 and 2023, despite comprising only 9.3% of the population. This suggests foreign nationals were 71% more likely to be convicted of sexual offenses than British citizens.

 

Thanks AI

 

What a grifter you are vesper haha

 

All good

 

Youre obviously very sensitive and dont like facts

 

 

 

 

[Vesper 30,185]

6 minutes ago, CucurellatheCat said:

 

According to a report by the Centre for Migration Control, based on MoJ data obtained via FOI requests, foreign nationals accounted for approximately 23% of sexual offense convictions (including rape) in England and Wales between 2021 and 2023, despite comprising only 9.3% of the population. This suggests foreign nationals were 71% more likely to be convicted of sexual offenses than British citizens.

 

Thanks AI

 

What a grifter you are vesper haha

 

All good

 

Youre obviously very sensitive and dont like facts

 

 

 

 

as I already showed above, that chart by the RW xenophobic Centre for Migration Control is based off a disingenuous massaging of the data

[Vesper 30,185]

23 hours ago, CucurellatheCat said:

Your lover boy, hes probably on holiday with starlin and his ukranian femboys

Put your strapon away lool

oh so now the open homophobia comes flowing out

and pro tip, I am a cis-gender married lesbian, my wife is a cis female

[Vesper 30,185]

18 minutes ago, CucurellatheCat said:

Right winger yeah?!! i voted lib dem last election you bandit lmao

bollocks, the Lib Dems are some of the most pro-immigration pols in the UK

 

https://www.libdemvoice.org/liberals-for-immigrants-77029.html

 

[Thor 2,712]

Agreed. We're set on the right wing. Need a left winger to help Gittens. 

[CucurellatheCat 23]

7 hours ago, Vesper said:

as I already showed above, that chart by the RW xenophobic Centre for Migration Control is based off a disingenuous massaging of the data

what are you talking about, you linked to the guardian that was a load of guff

I literally used chat gpt 5 and grok 4 and asked it for crime stats of foreign nationals, its literally just using the data hahahah

[CucurellatheCat 23]

7 hours ago, Vesper said:

bollocks, the Lib Dems are some of the most pro-immigration pols in the UK

 

https://www.libdemvoice.org/liberals-for-immigrants-77029.html

 

ohhh so now youre telling me how i voted???

dear god, you got issues haha

if these people are all so great and amazing why dont they all go home to their great lands, make africa and afghan great again

oh wait, they already destroyed their home lands and blame it on everyone else lol

you wont change my mind posting the absolute guff you do, lets agree to disagree and move on

 

[CucurellatheCat 23]

1 hour ago, CucurellatheCat said:

what are you talking about, you linked to the guardian that was a load of guff

I literally used chat gpt 5 and grok 4 and asked it for crime stats of foreign nationals, its literally just using the data hahahah

It's literally the only data available so we go with the evidence thats there

Its fact that they're trying to hide this at state level to avoid having the majority burn this once great ship down. 

Besides, how can you state as fact what those stats show are lies at the same time as pushing something with even less actually 0 evidence - that theyre not true

Change your username to Karen lol

[CucurellatheCat 23]

vesper been posting all night lmao

not even in the uk

what is this forum, like 10 posters and thats it

echo chamber of madness

[Vesper 30,185]

[Vesper 30,185]

7 hours ago, CucurellatheCat said:

what is this forum, like 10 posters and thats it

9 now, cleverclogs 

[NikkiCFC 8,324]

 

[Vesper 30,185]

Jeffrey is my copilot.

[Fulham Broadway 17,317]

 

[Fernando 6,585]

[Vesper 30,185]

3 hours ago, Fernando said:

US prices continued rise in July as Trump tariffs impact consumer costs

Prices were 2.7% higher last month compared with a year ago, and core inflation went up at a higher pace than what was seen in June

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/12/inflation-cpi-trump-tariffs

US prices continued to rise in July, according to key economic data released on Tuesday, as Donald Trump’s international tariffs shakeup started to impact consumer costs.

Prices were 2.7% higher last month compared with a year ago, according to the consumer price index (CPI), which measures the prices of a basket of goods and services. Though inflation dipped down in the spring, the annualized inflation rate jumped up 0.4% since April.

Though the inflation rate stayed stable between June and July, core inflation, which excludes the volatile energy and food industries, went up 3.1% over the last month – a higher pace than what was seen in June.

Prices for takeout and restaurants jumped up 3.9% over the last year, pushing up overall food prices by 2.9%. Prices for used cars, housing and medical care also jumped up higher than the overall rate.

 

snip

 

One of the biggest Trumpian lies was that inflation was 'out of control' still when the early November 2024 US elections took place. That was complete bollocks. It was actually lower then that is it now.

[Fernando 6,585]

2 hours ago, Vesper said:

US prices continued rise in July as Trump tariffs impact consumer costs

Prices were 2.7% higher last month compared with a year ago, and core inflation went up at a higher pace than what was seen in June

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/12/inflation-cpi-trump-tariffs

US prices continued to rise in July, according to key economic data released on Tuesday, as Donald Trump’s international tariffs shakeup started to impact consumer costs.

Prices were 2.7% higher last month compared with a year ago, according to the consumer price index (CPI), which measures the prices of a basket of goods and services. Though inflation dipped down in the spring, the annualized inflation rate jumped up 0.4% since April.

Though the inflation rate stayed stable between June and July, core inflation, which excludes the volatile energy and food industries, went up 3.1% over the last month – a higher pace than what was seen in June.

Prices for takeout and restaurants jumped up 3.9% over the last year, pushing up overall food prices by 2.9%. Prices for used cars, housing and medical care also jumped up higher than the overall rate.

 

snip

 

One of the biggest Trumpian lies was that inflation was 'out of control' still when the early November 2024 US elections took place. That was complete bollocks. It was actually lower then that is it now.

Very limited impact. 

Not nearly high enough for Jerome Powell not to cut rates. 

We been waiting for this high inflation from tariff and so far it has not sky rocket out of control. 

Federal Reserve slow once again to action. 

[Vesper 30,185]

31 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Very limited impact. 

Not nearly high enough for Jerome Powell not to cut rates. 

We been waiting for this high inflation from tariff and so far it has not sky rocket out of control. 

Federal Reserve slow once again to action. 

Many of the tariffs did not full take effect until recently or were 'TACO'd (ie Trump Always Chickens Out) and kicked down the road. Also many of the large firms built up inventory on a pre-tariff basis but those inventories will soon be gone, or are gone already.

Every time the US has tried a high tariff regime in modern times, it has been disastrous.

Trump, the wilfully ignorant economic 'thinker', thinks Smoot-Hawley was wonderful. 🤪

Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot–Hawley_Tariff_Act

The Tariff Act of 1930, also known as the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, was a protectionist trade measure signed into law in the United States by President Herbert Hoover on June 17, 1930. Named after its chief congressional sponsors, Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley, the act raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods in an effort to shield American industries from foreign competition during the onset of the Great Depression, which had started in October 1929.

Hoover signed the bill against the advice of many senior economists, yielding to pressure from his party and business leaders. Intended to bolster domestic employment and manufacturing, the tariffs instead deepened the Depression because the U.S.'s trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own, leading to U.S. exports and global trade plummeting. Economists and historians widely regard the act as a policy misstep, and it remains a cautionary example of protectionist policy in modern economic debates. It was followed by more liberal trade agreements, such as the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934.

[Vesper 30,185]

Cooking the Inflation and Jobs Numbers

Today on TAP: There are some genuine problems with BLS methods. A hack Trump appointee is not the answer.

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-08-13-cooking-inflation-jobs-numbers-trump-bls/

 

Trump’s appointment of a hack loyalist, E.J. Antoni of the Heritage Foundation, to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics could actually lead to some interesting debates if Trump’s goal were not to rig the data. The BLS derives the Consumer Price Index by sampling tens of thousands of actual prices in different parts of the country, and then weighting them to create a “market basket” of typical consumer purchases. To calculate the unemployment rate, the BLS conducts two different surveys, one of households and the other of employers.

Antoni has objected that the BLS often issues major revisions after the initial CPI numbers, because some sources are slower to report than others. Likewise jobs numbers. He recently called for the BLS to issue its own reports quarterly rather than monthly.

More mainstream critics than Antoni have pointed out that the BLS methodology is outmoded in an era when large retailers keep all of their prices on computers updated minute to minute. MIT economists Alberto Cavallo and Roberto Rigobon have created a “Billion Prices Project,” which scrapes daily online pricing data from retailers to compute real-time inflation. Many other economists have also noted that the employer survey on jobs sometimes contradicts the household survey.

The problem, however, is that Trump did not appoint Antoni to make technical refinements for the sake of better data. He appointed him to cook the numbers. And both things are not possible.

The consumer price numbers that BLS released this week were pretty mixed. The July increase was only 0.2 percent, down from the June rate of 0.3 percent. But core inflation, less food and energy, rose at a 3.1 percent annual rate, which is above the previous several months.

Whatever the eventual effect of Trump’s tariffs, it hasn’t fully shown up in the CPI. So it’s awfully hard, even for Trump, to contend that his enemies have rigged the statistics when the numbers are bad but that the figures are legitimate when they are good.

One of the main consumers of the BLS price data is the Federal Reserve. The Fed looks closely at inflation trends in deciding whether to raise or lower interest rates or keep them the same. The fact that inflation was relatively low in July suggests that the Fed could well make a modest cut in rates at its September meeting, though rising core inflation may cut against that.

The Fed’s economists will be looking intently at any adjustments that Antoni tries to make, either in BLS methods or in revisions after the fact. The Fed system employs some 500 Ph.D. economists and a total of more than 15,000 professional employees, dwarfing the BLS. The Fed could develop its own data series on jobs and prices, reinforcing the role of the Fed as one of the few centers of policy and expertise that Trump doesn’t control. If Antoni succeeds in rigging the BLS numbers, businesses and scholars, as well as the Fed itself, would rely on the Fed’s numbers.

The problem, however, as economist Teresa Ghilarducci points out, is that a variety of laws specify the CPI as the basis for adjustments in everything from Social Security checks, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), annual increases for federal and military pensions, veterans’ benefits, federal tax brackets and penalties, state minimum wages, HUD housing subsidies, and collective-bargaining agreements across the private sector.

So while the Fed can help keep the BLS honest, there is no substitute for data that is free from political manipulation.