CARMEL – Sometime this coming weekend, Joe Sixpack, Betty Sixpack and the Sixpack brood are going to want to celebrate the Fourth of July with their usual trip to grandma’s house, the family barbecue and, of course, fireworks. In a day or two, Joe Sixpack is going to get the economic shock of discovering just how bad inflation has gotten. He’s paid the $5.25 a gallon for gas, but Betty has done much of the grocery shopping for the family and the full impact of inflation has been hidden by nifty new packaging and marketing gimmicks.  

The two Sixpack progeny, Biff and Buffy, have been largely immune from inflation as far as they know and are far more worried about which pronoun they will use to call themselves next year in school.

Joe is going to head down to the local stop and shop to fill up the gas tank for the trip to grandma’s house. His full tank is going to cost him over $100 for his pickup truck. He will go inside to pick up a case of beer because nothing goes better than alcohol with high explosives. He will be shocked to find that the price of beer has risen over 5% since April.  

While Joe is loading in the necessities, Betty will be loading the grocery cart with brats, buns, condiments, chips, baked beans, potato salad and coleslaw. She’ll find that she will pay nearly 22% more for groceries this July Fourth than last year.  Finally, Joe will be forced to inform Biff and Buffy that because of the sky-high inflation, there won’t be money for the big bang, lalapalooza, epic grand finale fireworks that they bought last year. He tells the kids that nationally, fireworks prices have risen by 35%.

It will be one irritated family that shows up at grandma’s house and the mood won’t change as aunts, uncles and cousins show up with their own tales of inflation woes.  No, the Fourth of July holiday is going to do nothing to help President Biden and his abysmal low poll numbers. All that fairy tale story about inflation being transitional and a side effect of Putin’s war can be thrown out the window or exploded in thin air like a used bottle rocket. The true origin of runaway inflation and the people responsible for it will be known for sure by the time next Monday rolls around. President Biden and the Democrat-led Congress will get their just share of the blame and rage from common Americans who just got gob smacked in the face with Democrat economics.

The average American voter will soon understand that the enormous tax credit given on electric vehicles that they cannot afford has a price that they must pay. They will understand that canceled oil and gas pipelines, canceled drilling leases and President Biden’s promise to put the coal industry out of business all carry gigantic price tags that they will pay for the rest of their lives. They will learn that the free money handed out like candy during the pandemic wasn’t really free. They will now know that covering every inch of road with eight inches of new blacktop has its price.  

The consumer voter will know that the Democrat Party and its befuddled leader Joe Biden has misled them for years. They will now know that trillions of dollars in deficit porkbarrel spending have directly led to the highest levels of inflation in the last 40 years. They will know the truth and they will be furious.

Armed with this knowledge, you would think that Democrats in Congress would get busy and try to create an impression that they are trying to do something to alleviate the financial woes of their political base. Nope, not these knuckleheads. They are spending and wasting all their energy on conducting show hearings on the doings of January 6. My guess is that if all the angry inflation-sick voters got together in Washington, D.C., they would probably do more damage and raise more hell than the January 6 protestors.

The Fourth of July is a time of great national pride, but many Americans will be disgusted to see their president go hat in hand to Saudi Arabia to plead with their murderous thug leadership to increase oil production. Imagine that the United States has enough oil reserves to be 100% energy independent, but because of the Democrats’ religion of climate change, we have to beg for more oil. It just makes no sense at all. The people will see it and their anger will rise.

Clueless Jimmy Carter never really understood what made the American people act. He installed solar panels on the White House and declared a great victory during his one term. He wrote off the angst of the American people as just suffering from a national malaise. We were suffering from a malaise and the malaise was inflicted on us by a feckless president and his do-nothing Democrat Congress. We should be thankful that we elected Ronald Reagan as a result of Carter’s incompetence.

The damage to the Democrat brand will last far longer than just the upcoming mid-term elections. Its most loyal voting base are the people who are most hurt by inflation. They hear of the president canceling student debt for a mostly white college-educated demographic, yet no one cancels their mortgage, rent or credit card bills. Inflation is the most regressive tax imposed on society by its own government. Once you start questioning the lies of your political party, the damage may morph into long-term rebellion or just plain apathy.

Yes, Joe Sixpack is going to see an extremely up close and personal bill for his inflation, and he is going to be as mad as hell and not going to take it any longer. November just cannot come soon enough to suit me.