7/06/2025

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s been a long holiday weekend with those wanting to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday up here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire making their appearance. From Wednesday evening onward the traffic was heavy, heavier than I can ever remember it being. The WP Mom and I went grocery shopping Thursday morning, figuring we’d beat the rush.

We were wrong.

It usually takes us about 5 to 10 minutes to make the trip between The Gulch and the local supermarket. (If we have to stop at all 4 traffic lights during the trip it takes us 10 minutes.) It was closer to 15 minutes before we pulled into the parking lot in front of the supermarket. The lot was full. Even though we were able to park in a handicap parking space, it was out in the East Overshoe section of the lot which meant it was a bit of a hike for the WP Mom.

Once inside the supermarket chaos reigned.

Surprisingly it didn’t take us as long as we thought it might to finish our shopping as the market had every checkout lane open and baggers on each lane. We made it back to the car in about 20 minutes...but then it was almost 20 minutes before we made it back to The Gulch as the traffic had gotten even heavier and slower.

In general, traffic was heavy all weekend. I didn’t see nearly as much traffic this morning when I made my usual Sunday morning Walmart run. But then, I made that shopping run almost an hour earlier than usual – 7 am rather than 8 am.

I will be heading out again later today to run a couple of errands so it will be interesting to see how heavy the traffic is this afternoon.

==+++++==


On Wednesday I saw a Facebook post made by a distant cousin (who shall remain nameless in order to keep her from being flamed) that claimed that the June job numbers showed a first time loss of jobs and laid the blame on Donald Trump. I did ask where she got her job numbers but I never heard back from her. The official jobs numbers from the Labor Department for June showed 147,000 new jobs filled which was 37,000 more than predicted.

Yes, I understand that monthly jobs numbers are almost always adjusted a month or so later once all the reports have been tallied, either upwards or downwards. But it seems that every jobs report since Trump started his second term have been revised upwards while they were almost always revised downwards during the Biden Administration.

The Wall Street Journal reports that even though some “manufacturers have paused hiring amid tariff uncertainties, the unemployment rate fell partly because fewer people are looking for work.” (The link may be paywalled.)

U.S. job growth continued at a steady pace last month, surprising economists who had predicted a slowdown in hiring amid uncertainty over trade and fiscal policy.

The country added 147,000 jobs in June, the Labor Department reported Thursday, above the gain of 110,000 jobs economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected.

The unemployment rate fell to 4.1% from 4.2%.

Revisions showed that hiring was stronger in prior months than previously thought. The number of jobs added in April and May was a combined 16,000 higher than prior estimates. Job growth was heavily concentrated in state and local government and in healthcare.

That much of that job growth in April and May was “heavily concentrated” in state and local government bothers me seeing most of them were in education, though the growth in healthcare jobs is promising.

On a local note, I know our school system has a problem when it comes to jobs, that being that even as our school population has shrunk by 15% over the past 15 years, the number of school employees has grown by 40%. Why?

If the non-education growth in local government jobs was due to growth in the population in towns and cities, I see that as more of a positive. I’ll admit some skepticism to the growth in state government jobs being a positive things.

It will be interesting to see what the adjusted jobs numbers for June will look like in a month or so.

==+++++==


What sounds true isn’t always actually true, particularly when it comes to illegal immigrants and taxes.

Liberals Claim Illegals Pay Taxes and Add to Society… The Numbers Don’t Show That at All

Liberals are always quick to say that illegal aliens pay taxes from their paychecks and add to American society, however, the actual numbers don’t make their case at all. Indeed, the numbers show that, overall, they don’t add anything but, instead, take from is all.

Democrats even go farther in their support for illegals and claim that they really don’t benefit from our system at all and that WE are the ones that reap all the benefits from illegal aliens.

--snip--

...yes, some of them pay taxes. But are they really a plus for us? The answer to that is a resounding no. And the reason for that is because they take far more in government services (both federal and state) than they ever pay in taxes.

The Center for Immigration Studies noted that 59 percent of non-citizen households are on welfare of one sort or another. That is compared to only 39 percent of citizens.

From the quote above one could make the argument that the non-citizen households include legal immigrants, but if one looks at the charts included in the linked article, it is stated that “59% of households headed by illegal immigrants, also called the undocumented, use at least one major program.” Only 52% of legal immigrant households do so.

This is something that needs a deeper look and the numbers better defined. If it is indeed true that the Democrats’ claims about illegal immigrants and taxes is not true, then we must make sure their their claims are exposed. This isn’t something that should be relegated to the “Everyone knows” category of misinformation.

==+++++==


What does the Left always seem to root for the bad guys?

Could it be because the bad guys do the things that they’d like to do, but are too chicken to do themselves?

==+++++==


And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re recovering from the holiday weekend, the heat and humidity have returned, and where Monday is coming back to plague us again.