Stuff You May Not Know
“When we live such fragile lives,
It’s the best way to survive.
I go around a time or two,
Just to waste my time with you.
Tell me all you’ve thrown away.
Find out games you don’t want to play.
You are the only one,
That needs to know.
I’ll keep you my dirty little secret.
Don’t tell anyone or you’ll just be another regret.
Just another regret. Hope that you can keep it.
My dirty little secret.
Who has to know?”
What we used to call the “mainstream media” is complete propaganda and indoctrination. It is worthless. But in the interests of brevity or a catchy headline, even non-woke media can fail to tell you, as Paul Harvey always said “the rest of the story.”
Here are a few items that were in the news in the last week, that you either heard only the partial truth, or perhaps didn’t hear at all:
Consumer Confidence: Markets and media pay a lot of attention to the consumer confidence survey every month from the University of Michigan. The accuracy of this survey has always been in some doubt because it surveys only a few hundred people to derive the attitudes of all 330 million of us.
That said, you may have heard that there was a big drop in consumer confidence according to this survey. That is true. Propaganda outlets blamed it on Trump, as they do with everything that seems to be bad.
What few reported was that this survey broke down entirely on a partisan basis. The overall consumer sentiment score was 57.9. It is true that that was down. But the score amongst Republicans was 83.9, little changed from the month before. Democrats, however, gave a score of 41.4. That is a stunning discrepancy!
The real story here is not the score itself, but the further polarization of America by political affiliation. We used to all view the economy through a similar lens. Not any more. Today, if your side is in charge, you are optimistic. If the other side is, it’s the end of the world.
Delta Airlines: Delta’s stock got hammered last week when they lowered their outlook for the upcoming quarter. Bookings for future flights were way below expectations.
What you may have missed was some of the detail. One of the major declines in their future flight reservations was from the federal government. Federal employees working remotely have apparently been flying a lot on the taxpayer dime to get from home to wherever they are supposed to be. Because of DOGE, this has all stopped.
This is exactly the sort of needless spending that needs to stop. If people were in the office, they would not have to fly to the office from Montana from a meeting. If you think the deficit is a problem, and you should, you must support DOGE. But also understand that cutting all that government spending, no matter how wasteful, takes a dose of stimulus out of the economy.
Treasury Secretary Bessent: The new Treasury Secretary has been making the rounds in media, including the propaganda outlets, and doing interviews. Unlike Biden administration people, and most Democrat politicians, he is not lying or obfuscating what he is doing. He is very direct and honest, even when that may not be what people want to hear. Those of us who watch the economy would be wise to pay attention. I don’t know him, but virtually everyone who does know him says he is very smart and is likely the best Treasury Secretary in decades. Here are a few excerpts from his recent interviews:
“Over the medium term, which is what we’re focused on, it’s a focus on Main Street. Wall Street’s done great. Wall Street can continue to do fine. But we have a focus on small business and consumers. We are going to rebalance the economy.”
“The market was up 20% last year, 20% the year before. Did the Biden administration succeed? The American people weren’t buying it just because the market was up. They voted out the Democrats.”
“The top 10% of Americans are 40% to 50% of consumption, and that is an unstable equilibrium. The bottom 50% of working Americans have gotten killed. We are trying to address that. We are trying to get (interest) rates down. Could we be seeing this economy that we inherited starting to roll a bit? Sure. There is going to be a natural adjustment as we move away from public spending to private spending. The market and the economy have just become hooked, addicted to this government spending and there’s going to be a detox period.”
“I’ve been in the investment business for 35 years, and I can tell you that corrections are healthy. They are normal.”
He is being very clear and unusually transparent. I think he’s doing the right thing. But whether you agree or not, you can see what’s coming.
Mortgage Delinquencies: This got zero coverage anywhere that I saw except the Wall Street Journal. But this is a big deal. According to the Journal, “7.05% of FHA mortgages issued last year went seriously delinquent - 90 days or more past when the payment is due - within 12 months. That’s more than at the 2008 peak of the subprime bubble.” I have added the emphasis so you notice that this is not about 10 years of mortgages. This is about loans made only in 2024. Yet “of the 52,531 FHA loans last year that went seriously delinquent within their first year, only nine resulted in foreclosure.” Why? Because Biden directed the FHA to make the payments for these people. According to the WSJ, the Biden FHA made 556,841 direct payments for delinquent borrowers in 2024.
What was the Biden administration doing here? They were making bad loans to people buying houses and then using billions of federal dollars to make the payments for these borrowers in order to prop up the housing market and make the loan quality and the economy look artificially good.
Trump won’t make those payments. He shouldn’t make those payments. Is the government paying your mortgage for you? When he stops, government spending will drop by billions, but 50,000 houses will go on the market as foreclosures.
This is the kind of garbage that the current administration inherited. Unwinding this crap will be painful. But, like a shot in your arm that hurts, it will prevent the complete debt crisis collapse that we were heading for.
Democrats’ Solutions for the Mess They Created in California: How do you clean up a mess you created without changing your actions that caused the mess?
For one answer to that question, let’s turn to former Democrat Congresswoman Katie Porter, who actually held the same seat I held for five terms in Congress from California. She announced last week that she is joining an increasingly crowded Democratic primary for governor to succeed termed-out Gavin Newsom. She is a Law Professor at UCI. (where I taught Political Science for a year) At her announcement, she said that there are two major initiatives she would have as governor. The first one is to, of course, “protect Californians” from Donald Trump. That’s pretty standard Dem fare these days. But, her second is something California Dems have noticed is a problem in their state, and that is to lower the cost of living.
Of course, almost every bill that gets passed in California raises the cost of living there. So, what was most interesting was the way Ms. Porter intends to tackle the subject. She said she would be “laser focused” on lowering the cost of child care, housing and college education (indoctrination). How will she do that? By “investing,” which translated means subsidies. All 3 of those things are already subsidized federally and in California. Said subsidies have actually raised the costs of those things, not lowered them. More subsidies will only dig the hole deeper.
There is another poll out showing that 48% of Californians would consider voting for a Republican in the next election. They really need to do that, seeing the alternatives.
Illegal Immigration: Did you see that in polling, illegal immigration has fallen from the number one issue people were worried about to 4th. Why? Trump has fixed it. Crossings are literally the lowest ever and are down in the 99 percentile range. There is still a wall to be built and drugs to be controlled, but the change has been remarkable.
That issue was easy. The economy and stopping the Biden/Harris wars will be much harder.
These are all “dirty little secrets.” But they need to be known by all.
But it’s still one hell of a start for Trump’s team.
I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free
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