August 2

Nice to have cooler weather. I pulled a lot of the weeds in the containers. I have a lot more to pull. I emptied a couple of the buckets conserving most of the soil. I filled two large pots I will keep for next year, topped off one of the largest pots, and brought up the levels in a couple of the other buckets I plan to keep. Those buckets I empty I will simply put in the trash tote for pick up. Those I want to get rid of but don't have room for the soil I will ask my landlord to take away for me. They said earlier that they would do that. I have the small pots I want to put in the fence hangers that need to be filled. I started to pull the weeds and found that the soil was a solid root ball. It was easier to empty the entire ball. I have started looking at what I want to plant next year. I have a couple of major criteria: high heat tolerance and full sun for most. I have only a small couple of spots for plants that prefer less than full sun. They still need to be heat tolerant. I also want plants that can be started from seed in the pots.

Dan Moynihan at CAN WE STILL GOVERN? posted these comments about Trump's firing the woman who headed the Bureau of Labor Statistics claiming the figures she published were "false" and intended to embarrass him. Moynihan is right that this marks another step on the way to an authoritarian America. But the statistics have become less meaningful for the last fifty years or so. The published employment figures ignores long term unemployed since 1994 when the Bureau stopped including those workers. If you look up ShadowStats you will see that the measure of unemployment would be about 25% if you use the formulas used until 1994. The figures for inflation have likewise been "massaged" several times also mainly to make inflation look better (that is, lower) especially when the Federal government wants to keep their borrowing costs low(er). I wonder where we will get even sort-of accurate statistics in the future.

A related observation from our grocery shopping. We had been buying our eggs from a small dairy where we also got our raw whole milk. The eggs came from local farmers and really did taste better though because they were from hens fed organic feed and raise free range. Those eggs were more expensive but we were willing to pay the cost. Also the eggs were labeled "large" and actually were large. We had to shift to a locally based large grocery because the distance to the dairy was becoming too much to handle as Mom's stamina declined. Recently I got a two dozen carton of "large" eggs but found that all were much smaller than what we were used to for large eggs. I showed one to Mom and asked what size she thought it was and she confirmed my observation: medium at best. That is "shrinkflation" with a vengeance. I have to adjust the number of eggs I use in my cooking. And this kind of thing doesn't show up in the inflation stats. Remember when cans of veggies shrank from 16 oz. to 14.5 oz. but the price was the same. No inflation here--a can is a can is a can.

And speaking of inflation: this piece on CROOKS&LIARS reports that Procter & Gamble are raising their prices on a lot of their products (which aren't specified) because Trump's tariffs will cost the company $1BILLION.