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Frequent contributor Jim Peters sent along this essay:

I am looking forward to the 33rd. season of Monday Night Football. Tonight, the Patriots take on the Philadelphia Eagles. One of the concerns is keeping Michael Vick healthy. For some reason, Michael Vick, the name, sticks out in my miind as a not good person, but I cannot remember why or when I came to that conclusion. Could be because he is not Tom Brady, who I heard today is expecting, or at least his wife is expecting. It is incredible when someone brings a life into the world. Tom Brady’s children will likely want for nothing, because of the salary their father earns. It is good for Tom Brady but alot of people cannot make ends meet in a difficult economy. I have a brother who works in robotics who sees a need for Americans to lower their earnings expectations in order to make us competitive in the world market. I see the need to raise the tariff. What can the Chinese do in response but not buy American. They are not buying American anyway, except for our cars. Maybe we should just manufacture cars.

A fair tariff would increase prices, and add to inflation, but it seems to me a little inflation is not necessarily a bad thing in this economy. We need to pay more in order to make the Chinese connection less important. Walmart loads an aircraft carrier size freighter every four days with Chinese goods which are delivered to ports on the West Coast. They then sell those products less expensively to the American public. Walmart is, in my opinion, anti-American. They pressure their employees to increase their stock prices by posting it near the offices in each store. They sell primarily foreign products. When I worked at Jordan Marsh, our men’s shirts were assessed at twice their cost because of the tariff. I am hoping that we are still demandiing a one hundred percent increase in prices as we did then for those shirts. Anything less allows imports to get hold of our wallets and makes us buy foreign-made, not American-made products.

According to the Lowell Sun, or perhaps it was the Boston Globe, Lowell and local parks are enjoying a banner year because of the cost of gasoline. I guess it really is an ill wind that blows no good. Speaking of ill winds, the drought will definitely increase food prices this year. The strange part of it is, that prices go up, but in a better year, they never come down. So the increases caused by the drought will result in higher prices permanently, I believe. If popcorn is $1.19 a pound, which is probably less than it actually is per pound, it will go up to a higher price because of the effect of the drought on corn. Anything based on corn, including corn-fed beef and pork, will go up. Wheat has been hard hit, so flour will be more, resulting in higher prices for bread and other wheat products. read more »