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Editorial/OP-ED

Opinion | Wonking Out: The Meaning of Falling Inflation

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Inflation is coming down — fast.

Gas prices, defying predictions of a nightmare summer for motorists, are leading the parade:

The majority of gas stations in the United States are already charging less than $4 a gallon, and declining wholesale prices suggest that retail prices still have farther to fall.

Food prices are also coming down. Here’s the futures price for wheat:

And business surveys are suggesting a broader decline in inflation. For example, the widely cited Institute of Supply Management survey of purchasing managers shows that prices paid for raw materials are still rising, but at a slower rate than they have in many months:

All of this means that official data on consumer prices will almost certainly show much smaller increases over the next few months than the shocking numbers we’ve become accustomed to lately. But what will this improvement mean?

I’ll get to the implications for economic policy in just a bit. But give me a minute to savor the political implications.

Republican efforts to regain control of Congress have rested almost entirely on blaming Joe Biden for inflation — and gas prices in particular.

Did Donald Trump, who is still the dominant figure in the G.O.P., attempt to overturn a legitimate election? Gas is over $5 a gallon! Are Republican judges and state legislators taking away rights women have had for decades? Gas is $5 a gallon!

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Now the party’s main election plank — pretty much their only election plank — is being sawed off at the base. I’ve been wondering what they’ll do. After spending many months doing all they can to dumb down the debate, Republicans will have a hard time suddenly pivoting to nuanced arguments about headline numbers versus underlying inflation.

So far, their main response seems to be to ignore the inflation slowdown and hope voters don’t notice. Here, for example, is Mehmet Oz, running to be a Pennsylvania senator, on Thursday:

Has this man visited a gas station near his New Jersey home lately?

When — I’m pretty sure that’s a “when,” not an “if” — official data also shows a sharp decline in inflation, my guess is that we’ll see denial supplemented by conspiracy theories: claims that the Biden administration is faking the numbers or somehow manipulating the commodity markets.

Should Democrats emphasize the good news on inflation and mock their opponents’ doomsaying? Yes! Any Democratic politician who responds to falling energy and food prices with a discourse about transitory versus underlying inflation should be in a different business.

Policymakers, however — which in this case basically means the Federal Reserve — are in a different business, and they should respond to the good inflation news by keeping calm and carrying on.

Many fashionable economic concepts have failed the test of time, but the concept of core inflation — distinguishing between volatile prices, like food and energy, and slower-moving prices that have a lot of inertia — has been highly successful since the economist Robert Gordon introduced it in the 1970s. Time and again, the Fed has steered through crises by ignoring critics who wanted it to panic over blips in inflation caused by temporary jumps in commodity prices.

Now, defining core inflation has gotten harder in the Covid era, because just excluding food and energy seems inadequate at a time when wild swings in things like used car prices and shipping costs have also driven fluctuations in the rate of inflation. At the moment, however, every measure of underlying inflation I’m aware of, from traditional core to measures that exclude any large price changes and changes in labor costs, points to unacceptably high underlying inflation.

So why is inflation coming down? Biden administration policy — releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, urging gas stations to pass on declines in wholesale prices, efforts to unsnarl supply chains — may have contributed. But the main story is likely a global economic slowdown: America probably isn’t in a recession, but Europe probably is, China remains hobbled by its zero-Covid policy and so on.

All of which has remarkably little bearing on appropriate U.S. policy. The Fed’s strategy is to bring underlying inflation down by using interest rate hikes to cool off the economy. Despite Friday’s hot labor market report, I have no doubt that this strategy will eventually work. But the good news we’re about to get about short-term inflation isn’t evidence that the strategy has already worked, and alas (I’m usually a monetary dove), it offers no justification for a pivot toward easier money.

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Does this mean that inflation is going to pop right back up again? Not necessarily. The Fed’s efforts probably will bring underlying inflation down over the next few months, so that by the time the transitory good news from gas prices fades out, it may be replaced by more permanent good news.

In any case, for the moment, inflation is headed down, no doubt to the great dismay of politicians who were counting on gas prices to deliver a red wave in November. Pass the popcorn.



Read the full article here

A journalist since 1994, he also founded DMGlobal Marketing & Public Relations. Glover has an extensive list of clients including corporations, non-profits, government agencies, politics, business owners, PR firms, and attorneys.

Editorial/OP-ED

Black Women Were Always at the Table — Stop Writing Them Out

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(BALTIMORE – August 8, 2025) – The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) recently dropped a timeline highlighting major milestones in U.S. women’s political history — from Seneca Falls to Kamala Harris. It’s long, detailed, and well-produced.

But let’s keep it real: it’s incomplete.
And this is personal for menot because I’m a woman.
I’m a man. A Black man.
And as a journalist, publisher, and student of history, I have a responsibility to call it like I see it.

What I see is a whole lot of celebration for white women’s progress — and not nearly enough credit given to the Black women who’ve been leading, building, organizing, and risking it all from day one.

Where’s Sojourner Truth, who stood up in 1851 and demanded the world answer: “Ain’t I a Woman?”
Where’s Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a Baltimore legend who confronted white women suffragists with truth and grace?
Where’s Ida B. Wells, who stared racism in the face and built her own organizations when others tried to silence her?

And how do you miss Frances Ellen Watkins Harper — a Baltimore-born powerhouse who was one of the first Black women to publish a book in the U.S. and who addressed the 1866 National Women’s Rights Convention with a message that still resonates? Raised and educated in Baltimore at her uncle’s Watkins Academy for Negro Youth, Harper’s early years in this city shaped the moral clarity and courage that defined her national work. She’s not a side note. She’s a cornerstone.

You mean to tell me there’s a 48-year gap between the 19th Amendment and the first meaningful mention of a Black woman in elected office? That’s not an oversight. That’s historical malpractice.

Black women have always been in the fight.
They didn’t wait to be invited. They didn’t ask for permission. They created their own lanes — from the Black women’s clubs of the 19th century to the organizing of the Civil Rights Movement to the halls of Congress today.

And while others were patting themselves on the back, Black women were doing the work.

I’m not speaking for them — I’m standing beside them.
And I’ll use every mic I’m handed to make sure their names, their labor, and their leadership are never erased. Because Black women didn’t just join the movement.
They moved the movement. And BlackUSA.News will always make sure the world knows it.

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Editorial/OP-ED

Message to the World: We Are Not Trump

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(BALTIMORE – August 2, 2025) – Greetings. 你好. Namaste. Hola. Bonjour. Salaam alaikum. Nomoshkar. Olá. Shalom. Здравствуйте.

I come to you humbly and respectfully to say this: most of the people I know and live among are nothing like President Donald Trump.

From where I stand, I imagine much of the world watches in disbelief as this man — and those aligned with him — continue to dismantle civil rights protections, gut healthcare programs like Medicaid, and insult global allies without remorse. It’s disheartening, shameful, and dangerous.

And yet, here we are.

Even after years of evidence — his public misogyny, the racism, the cruelty, the lies — millions still voted for him. Only now, with democracy in crisis and global trust fractured, are some Americans having what we call a “come-to-Jesus moment.”

That’s what we call cognitive dissonance: when someone knows the truth but refuses to fully accept its consequences.

Around the world, cultures may differ, but many share a basic value: respect. It costs nothing — but means everything.

I felt that truth in my bones when I watched Vice President J.D. Vance berate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in front of the global press. I was sickened. The disrespect was not only unnecessary — it was classless.

I wasn’t raised like that. And neither were many of the good people I know across this country.

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To be honest, I think the group most manipulated in all this were white women voters. They knew who Trump was. The video clips, the criminal allegations, the “grab ‘em” tape — it was all out there. But still, many chose him over Kamala Harris, a competent and qualified leader.

Was it the trauma of having had a Black president for eight years that made the idea of a Black woman too much to bear? Maybe. But it’s worth asking.

America has never truly reconciled with its original sin: slavery and the structural racism that followed. And now we have a president who canceled MLK Day, who mocked a teenage climate activist on the world stage, and whose wife often appears unwilling to even fake a smile beside him.

Let us not forget: this is the man who incited a violent insurrection on January 6th, 2021.

Dear world, please know this: America is better than what you’re seeing right now.

As my mother always said, “Nobody is better than you, and you are no better than anyone else.” That’s the kind of America I believe in — not one built on ego and profit, but on humility and shared dignity.

Still, we live in a society where your bank account defines your worth, where kindness is seasonal, and where too often, decency gets buried under division.

But where I come from — Baltimore — we still learn respect. At home, in the streets, in school. You give it, you get it. You don’t give it, you learn the hard way.

That’s the American spirit I stand for. That’s the America I want the world to know.

So no, we are not all like Trump. And many of us are doing everything we can to keep our country from falling deeper into that abyss.

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Wishing you peace in the midst of this storm.

‘Til next time,
Doni Glover

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Editorial/OP-ED

The Rebirth of BlackUSA.News

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(BALTIMORE – August 2, 2025) – In December 2020, right in the thick of COVID, everything was turned upside down. Interviewing people became nearly impossible — folks weren’t coming outside, Fauci was in everyone’s ear, and Trump was out here talking about drinking bleach. It was chaos.

But through the madness, we found a way forward. We embraced streaming.

Special thanks to Peggy Morris of Sisters4Sisters Network. She introduced me to StreamYard.com, and the rest is history. That connection helped birth BlackUSA.News — the national arm of BMORENews.com. It wasn’t the first time Peggy and her network showed up for us, and it likely won’t be the last.

From there, the movement grew.

On the West Coast, De’Von Walker and Troy Rawlings have been pillars. Troy — a Baltimore native — brings heat from Los Angeles, while De’Von’s Black Wall Street Board Game reminds us of Monopoly with a mission: to uplift Black-owned businesses.

In Oakland, Doug Blacksher has been a home-run-hitting host. His show consistently breaks reach records, diving deep into politics and business — his two favorite lanes.

Up in New York, our go-to is Tasemere Gathers of The DM Firm. She’s solid, dependable, and visionary. And we’d be remiss not to shout out Walter Edwards, Regina Smith, and Vito Jones in Harlem, as well as Makonen of the Harlem Business Alliance — each of them pushing the needle forward.

In Atlanta, Robert Scott and Bou Kahn have not only supported the news but have helped us successfully host the Joe Manns Black Wall Street Awards over the years.

And then there’s Lee Vaughan, our National President. Thanks to Lee, we’ve expanded from 6 to 9 cities — adding Mobile, Las Vegas, and Tulsa to the fold. One of his honorees? None other than D.L. Hughley.

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Let me not forget Dr. Eric Kelly, a brilliant connector introduced to us by the illustrious Marsha Jews, our resident anchor and a national treasure.

We stream live on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.
This is our rebirth.
This is BlackUSA.News.
Check us out — and spread the word.

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