Tom Tiffany sits down and says little with Up Front

Caught the Up Front show this morning, and it included an interview with both Democratic Guv nominee David Crowley and GOP Guv nominee Tom Tiffany. I wanted to give you Tiffany's interview (which begins at 7:42 of this clip) because even though Matt Smith wasn't exactly going Mike Wallace on Tommy Tiff, Tiffany still looked lame and scared.

Off the bat, Tiffany tries an attack on Crowley claiming "there's not a dime's worth of difference" between Crowley and Hong and that "the leadership of the Democrat (SIC!) Party has capitultated to this Democrat (SIC!) Socialist movement".

Now does Tiffany say what policies Crowley and Hong agree or how the Party has "capitulated" to the DSA "movement"? NO, OF COURSE NOT! Does Matt Smith ask "In what way has that happened?", to make Tiffany answer how he can say that? NO, OF COURSE NOT! He just moves on to the next question.

Tiffany pulls another bunch of empty statements later on when he talks about what really matters in this election.

TIFFANY: [Democrats] are going to try to divert from the real issues of this campaign and there's a reason for that. That's because they've been giving the 400-year property tax increase (something that's only possible by WisGOP refusing to fund schools at the state level) , the over $2 billion in rate increases - at this place we're sitting at right now, his utility bills went up $400 a month in the last year, and that's because they've just been rubber-stamping these increases. We have to deal with the affordability issue, and I'm going to do that.

Does Tiffany say HOW he's going to "deal with the affordability issue"? OF COURSE NOT! He's a Republican, do you think he knows anything beyond complaints and generalities? And does Smith ask how that's going to happen? OF COURSE NOT!

Smith asks what role Donald Trump and his support of Tiffany will have in the election, and that's where the Tiffany Tap Dance begins.

TIFFANY: ...the other side, they're going to campaigning against Donald Trump. I'm going to be campaigning for the State of Wisconsin, and I've really stayed foused throughout this campaign. This is about being governor. This isn't about being in Wisconsin and shouting at Washington DC. You control the things you can control, and that's what I'm going to do as Governor."

Oh? What happens in DC doesn't have any effect on what happens for the Governor of Wisconsin, despite the fact that nearly 30% of Wisconsin's state budget comes from the federal government?

But those federal aids may be getting lower under Trump/GOP. For example, UW-Madison reported a drop of $27 million in federally-funded research under the first year of Trump 2.0, due to loss of 145 federally-funded grants. In addition to the loss of potential findings and improvements for overall life, the loss of grants is a loss of jobs and economic activity, particularly with higher-educated people who have a lot of options on where to live. And do you think a Governor Tom Tiffany would do anything to advocate to the Trump Administration for those jobs or improvements?

Know how else a Governor "shouts at Washington DC"? By asking for disaster aids when weather events strike. Which seems really important given the headlines we've seen over the last year with this Administration.

“Trump has rejected disaster aid for Democratic-run states at the highest rate in the 47-year history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” Right now people in blue states are basically paying federal taxes as if they’re colonized territories of red states. www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

[image or embed]

— Murshed Zaheed (@murshedz.bsky.social) July 29, 2026 at 6:05 PM

We saw a similar dynamic play out here in Wisconsin, as the county David Crowley runs did not get tens of millions of dollars in aid requested after record rains hit Southeastern Wisconsin this time last year.

Disaster relief for six Wisconsin counties inundated by historic flooding back in August has again been denied by the federal government. It’s the second time that Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington, Grant, Milwaukee, Door and Grant counties have been denied assistance from the Trump administration since the floods drowned parks, damaged homes and trapped people in their cars in the middle of the night.

This latest denial was in response to an appeal filed by Gov. Tony Evers in November, after the first denial came from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). At the time, Evers stressed that the extreme storms had left over $26.5 million in disaster costs.

In a statement Monday, Evers called the new denial “completely unsatisfactory,” saying that the Trump administration had again denied the relief for Wisconsin “without any explanation” and calling for the decision to be reversed. “Wisconsinites have been hard at work to build back from these historic flooding events, but folks are not out of the woods yet,” said Evers. “Efforts to rebuild will cost tens of millions of taxpayer dollars that local communities will be on the hook for, and it’s really disappointing to see our federal leadership turn their backs on Wisconsin, our families, and our communities in our time of need. We will continue to advocate to the Trump Administration and our federal partners that Wisconsin needs these resources to rebuild and recover, and we will continue to do what we can to support our local partners however we can in the meantime.”...

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley called the denial for disaster relief “deeply disappointing” in a statement Monday. “My administration has worked to rebuild and recover after last summer’s historic storms and flooding,” said Crowley. “Without federal assistance, the financial burden of these public infrastructure repairs falls to local governments to cover. Communities rely on intergovernmental partnerships in times of crisis, and this decision by the Trump administration erodes that public trust. To move forward, my administration will continue working with the State of Wisconsin, our municipalities, and community partners to identify responsible funding solutions to rebuild our roads, bridges, parks, and public buildings. Our residents should not be forced to shoulder the full cost of disasters beyond their control, and we will continue advocating for the resources our community deserves.”

Relatedly, doesn't Tom Tiffany have a job right now in Washington DC that pays $174,000+ per diem expenses and benefits? Couldn't he do something right now to deal with a pointless, losing war in the Middle East and record profits in the US that are raising prices and causing problems back here in Wisconsin? Shouldn't he be using his position as an elected Congressman to vocally push for aid to go to the Fox Valley after their devastating storms from late July, like Governor Evers has done?

Sure leads one to ask a simple question of Tom Tiffany.

via GIPHY

To Matt Smith's credit, he does ask about another item where the presidency and the Governor of Wisconsin would interact - certifying the presidential elections, which is something Tiffany voted against doing in 2020. And Tiffany's answer is both lame and non-reassuring.

SMITH: The Democrats are going to come at your hard for your vote on the 2020 election. Do you regret that at all, not voting to certify the results?

TIFFANY: No, Joe Biden won the election, and we've lived with the consequences of the massive inflation after he became president. Inflation went up the most in 40 years, and now it's up to us to do everything we can to fix those problems that were created from that. I'm looking forward, not backward.

SMITH: Do you regret your vote, though?

TIFFANY: I'm looking forwards, not backwards.

So not only does Tiffany not want to talk about why he decided to throw out the votes of Americans to keep Trump in office after 2020, he seems to think it was OK because...he didn't like how the Biden Presidency went?

Hey Tommy, if you don't like the outcome of what Wisconsinites choose in the 2028 elections because you think having Dems in charge is a bad outcome, WILL YOU STILL VOTE TO CERTIFY THE ELECTION? Because it sure seems like what you're saying you won't.

This guy is weak, and has nothing but surface-level complaints to go along with lots of weaknesses in both votes and policies. He should be hit constantly until he gives a real answer with real substance, which will damage his campaign even more, since Tiffany's solutions (what few they are) are going to be things that Wisconsin voters do not want.

I don't count on our corporate media to do that job (they love that dirty Uihlein/Hendricks ad money), but all Dems and their supporters sure should, and Dems should be filling in the blanks for the many things Tom Tiffany won't talk about.

Allegedly tame July inflation seems likely to rise again in August. And consumers already hate it.

INFLATION WATCH was back in the news this week. With Federal Reserve governors signaling that rate hikes will be considered at their meeting next month, the information about price trends in July was looked at as a key piece of data.

And from that side, the news was good if you didn’t want rates to go up, starting with a favorable report on consumer prices in July.

The consumer price index, part of the Federal Reserve’s inflation dashboard, showed a seasonally adjusted increase of 0.1% during July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Excluding food and energy, the so-called core CPI rose 0.2%...

Though the levels held well above the Fed’s 2% target, the tame monthly readings, coupled with similarly moderate levels in June, indicate that the energy-fueled burst earlier in the year is easing, though prices remain volatile and subject to constantly changing conditions in the Middle East.

Stock market futures rose following the release while Treasury yields were negative across the board. Traders further cut the probability for a September rate hike, lowering the odds to 42%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch gauge of futures prices.

That leveled off the year-over-year increase in Consumer Prices that had exceeded 4% a couple of reports ago.

The next day, the Producer Price Index report said cost pressures lessened for businesses as well.

Wholesale costs for goods and services were flat in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday in the latest positive sign for inflation.

The producer price index, a measure of underlying inflation pressures, was unchanged for the month, below the 0.2% Dow Jones consensus estimate and after falling 0.1% in June. The June figure was revised from a previously reported decline of 0.3%.

Excluding food and energy, the core PPI rose 0.2%, against the forecast for a 0.3% gain. The core PPI excluding trade services increased 0.4%.

But a couple of items made me skeptical that the inflation of the first half of 2026 was slowing down to that 2% level. The first is the Institute for Supply Management (ISM), whose monthly reports from businesses have shown prices continue to rise at a significant clip. And while it may not be as rapid as we were seeing, it’s still well above the rate that those businesses were reporting in 2024 or 2025.

So what’s correct? Is it the information in the BLS reports, or is it from the businesses who are supplying info to the ISM? After all, if there’s one area where the Trump Administration would manipulate data, it would be in the inflation reports because Trump is constantly saying how he wants interest rates to stay where they are or go lower.

Whether it’s honest or not, I note that the CPI and PPI reports say gasoline prices went down in July for the second straight month (CPI gas -2.9%, PPI gas -5.7%). That’s despite AAA saying that the nation’s average gas price rose from $3.80 on 4th of July weekend to $4.10 by the end of the month.

I looked at the explanations of how these price indexes are figured in the CPI report, and I don’t get a complete answer as to when these prices are measured.

The CPIs are based on prices of food, clothing, shelter, fuels, transportation, doctors’ and dentists’ services, drugs, and other goods and services that people buy for day-to-day living. Prices are collected each month in 75 urban areas across the country from about 6,000 housing units and approximately 22,000 retail establishments (department stores, supermarkets, hospitals, and other types of stores and service establishments). All taxes directly associated with the purchase and use of items are included in the index. Prices of fuels and a few other items are obtained every month in all 75 locations. Prices of most other commodities and services are collected every month in the three largest geographic areas and every other month in other areas. Prices of most goods and services are obtained by personal visit, telephone call, web, or app collection by the Bureau’s trained representatives.

So does BLS just take a moving average throughout the month, so the low prices in the first half of July overweight the “average” price? And would that mean the higher gas prices of August end up showing as an even higher price hike in the inflation report, because July’s average price was lower than it was at the end of the month?

It definitely feels like inflation has bounced back in August, and it’s reflected in a drop in the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment report, which came out on Friday.

Consumer sentiment fell about 8% this August, ending two consecutive months of improvement. While views of personal finances saw only minor declines, expected business conditions sank 11% for the short run and 17% for the long run. Decreases in sentiment were seen across the political spectrum, with Republicans exhibiting the strongest month-to-month decline in August. Sentiment among Republicans is now 19% below readings just prior to the Iran conflict and the lowest since the 2024 election. Although the early-month weakening in sentiment was pervasive across various demographic groups, notably large reductions were seen among older consumers, lower-income consumers, and those without a college degree. These groups are all particularly vulnerable to any erosion of purchasing power stemming from inflation. Across all consumers, only 8% expect their income growth to exceed inflation in the year ahead, down from 18% in December 2024, a reflection of the belief that high prices will continue to be burdensome.

Trump/GOP has ZERO plan or really much interest to do anything about this rebounding inflation and the related weakening in consumer sentiment. Good luck running on being the folks in charge of this situation in 80 days.

Upon review, here are more election notes and figures

I wanted to add a couple of other pieces of data from the Dem Governor’s primary that give a good insight as to how things ended up as they did.

First, I want to give Marquette Professor John Johnson’s analysis of the votes in Milwaukee County. Johnson notes that there were strong similarities between Tuesday’s results and another time Crowley won a nail-biter.

In both campaigns, Crowley (a moderate Democrat) faced off against a progressive challenger running clearly to his left. In 2020, this challenger was State Senator Chris Larson, whose district covers the east side of Milwaukee. In 2026, his main opponent, Francesca Hong, was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (and endorsed by Larson).

To a remarkable degree, Hong and Larson won similar parts of Milwaukee County in their respective campaigns against Crowley.

Within the city, Crowley’s significant sources of votes in either election were the majority Black north side along with some of the more conservative, majority white neighborhoods on the city’s western fringe. Hong and Larson won everywhere else, with particular strength in the liberal strongholds between I-43 and Lake Michigan. This progressive strength also extended into adjacent suburbs including St. Francis, Shorewood, Cudahy, and South Milwaukee—all places where Crowley trailed both Hong and Larson.

However, Crowley handily won a different set of suburbs. On the north shore, he carried River Hills, Bayside, and Brown Deer. To the southwest, he won Greenfield, Greendale, Franklin, and Hales Corners. His support grew the most on the north shore between these two elections. For example, he ever-so-slightly lost Fox Point to Larson in 2020, but he defeated Hong in that wealthy suburb by more than 25 points.

This complements the double-digit wins for Crowley over Hong in the suburban WOW Counties next to Milwaukee. These are places that have made the strongest turns toward Democrats in the Trump era, and that’s part of the reason that two of the biggest winners of Tuesday’s election may be Dem Senate Leader Dianne Hesselbein and Dem Assembly Leader Greta Neubauer (even though they won’t ever admit this publicly).

That’s because WisDem consultant Joe Zepecki told the New Republic’s Greg Sargent that the best places for Crowley in the primary are many of the communities where Dems are most likely to pick up seats in this November’s races in the Wisconsin Legislature.

“Crowley’s path to victory runs through suburban Wisconsin and through holding down Republican margins in rural communities. That overlaps with exactly where Dems need to win state legislative seats to get the trifecta next year.” Wisconsin Dem strategist, quoted in this piece:

[image or embed]

— Greg Sargent (@gregsargent.bsky.social) August 13, 2026 at 6:37 AM

The total number of votes in the WOW Counties also gave them an increased influence on the 2026 Dem Guv primary compared to the contested one that Tony Evers won in 2018. Total votes were up by 47% compared in the Dem Guv primary this week vs 8 years, but the WOW Counties were up even more than that, jumping by 83%.

This translates into the WOW Counties having a larger share of the votes in the 2026 primary, and the City of Milwaukee having a smaller one (even though the City had its turnout go up by 17,000 compared to 2018).

But why did the polls not catch on to Crowley’s increasing chances of getting more votes than Hong? That’s what G. Elliot Morris looked into, as he gave data to one of the pollsters that had Hong up 20+ points.

Last year, a non-profit called State Navigate contracted me to develop a flexible survey weighting program that they could use on any poll of a statewide or state legislative district primary or general election. This program let them adjust the data they got back in their polls to be representative of the population they were trying to sample.

I did not ask for money from State Navigate, but instead to have access to the raw data and to be able to analyze it publicly for posts like these. State Navigate has agreed to let me publish the analysis below. I did not share it with them beforehand. (For what it’s worth, State Navigate was the most accurate pollster in both the Virginia and New Jersey governor elections in 2025.)

Based on the analysis below, I conclude:
· Most of the miss in polls in Wisconsin is attributable to faulty demographic targets (too many young people). This inflated Hong’s vote margin by about 10 points.

· My best guess is that the race moved 6 points toward Crowley after pollsters released their final surveys.

· Non-ignorable non-response within demographic categories likely further inflated Hong’s vote margin by 2 points.

Which means that a theory the Crowley campaign had before the election turned out to be true – that polls were missing the reality that primary voters skew older, and that was a group he was likely to do better with.

So 3 days after that stunning result, we can see how it happened. And I can't think that Crowley would lose many of Hong's voters, given that she tended to do best in the areas and demos where Dems do strongest. Combine that with Crowley's strong performance among suburban and more rural areas, that may give him a better baseline to start from when it comes to cutting into GOP margins this November, and in turning areas that are up for grabs toward the Dems.

Tuesday was a BAD Election Night for the Tiffany campaign for these reasons, and no wonder why they were thrown off their game by the result. They don't have anything to run on themselves, especially when the Republican candidate has blindly supported everything that an unpopular President has done in the last 19 months. So they need voters to be scared of the Dem candidate for them to have a chance. When the media-described "moderate" wins and is powered to victory by groups of voters and areas of the state that are already trending toward the Dems, it makes it a lot harder for GOPs to win with that "scare dumb people" strategy.

The fun never stops in Wisconsin elections, does it?

24 hours ago, I bet a lot of us weren't thinking we'd be seeing this reality.

Decision Desk HQ projects David Crowley wins the WI Governor Democratic Primary #DecisionMade: 2:20 AM EDT

[image or embed]

— Decision Desk HQ (@decisiondeskhq.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 1:21 AM

Well ain't that a fun surprise? A few thoughts.

1. While I wasn't expecting a Crowley win, it did feel like things were tightening. In my neighborhood on the West Side of Madison, I noticed a number of Crowley signs show up in the last week, and sure enough, Crowley won my ward over Hong convincingly. A lot of Dem voters got the message that Crowley was the only candidate that could defeat Hong, and met the assignment.

2. If Fran Hong stays off of national TV, she probably wins yesterday. Hong had taken the frontrunner role by meeting Wisconsin voters and giving online content to Wisconsin voters. Why she decided to go Hollywood before she was the nominee is beyond me, and sure enough, the national media concentrated on stupid comments in old tweets instead of the issues and interests that put Hong in the lead. Fran also did not respond well to those non-troveries, which sent the message that she was not ready for the Big Job, and it scared a number of Dem voters who were/are terrified of an election-denying lowlife like Tom Tiffany being Governor ahead of the 2028 elections.

3. Here were my thoughts on turnout last weekend, as I compared it to the much-smaller amount of votes in the 2018 Dem Guv primary.

I would anticipate quite a bit more than 538,000 votes being cast for the Dem Guv primary on Tuesday. Most of that is due to there being no seriously contested statewide primary for the GOP, so casual voters will go for where the heat is in this election, which is on the Dem side (yes, there may be a few dweeby GOPs who may try to vote in the Dem primary to advance Hong. But their numbers are small and they should be careful for what they wish for).

My very unscientific guess is that it means around 700,000+ votes would be on the Dem side, and maybe more like 750,000, given that voting-age population has grown a bit in the 8 years since then. The overwhelming majority of those votes will be on Election Day, since the Wisconsin Elections Commission says there have been a little over 265,000 votes cast so far overall (and that includes all parties).

I ended up being a bit short on that. Total Dem votes in the Guv election looks to be just over 792,000, which is almost 50% more than the votes cast in Gov Evers' win in August 2018. And Crowley and Hong both exceeded Evers' 2018 winning total by more than 86,000 votes, and well above the 275,000 "win total" that I thought was needed yesterday.

In fact, the combined total of Crowley and Hong votes ended up nearly 160,000 votes above the winning total that Tom Tiffany had on the Republican side, despite Tiffany pulling 95% of the GOP votes in a virtually cleared field. And there were more than 300,000 additional votes cast in the Dem Guv race than the GOP's, once again showing that in Wisconsin primaries, voters will check out the more interesting and contested race.

4. The places that Hong and Crowley did well in were telling. Take a look at this map of last night's results.

Crowley won almost all counties in the Southeastern part of the state, and also won most rural counties. Hong won the 3 BOW Counties in the Fox Valley, won Dane County, and won most counties that had UW campuses.

And if you know which people live where in Dane County, you can see the Socioeconomic differences in this map. Much like the other one, areas won by Crowley are purple, and Hong's winning areas are green, with the darker shades showing a bigger margin of victory.

Hong did better in the hippie/college areas near downtown and along the Isthmus, as well as in more blue-collar urban parts of the metro area. Crowley did better in more affluent and more suburban areas of the county, and did well among Dems in the rural townships. And from what I can tell in the Milwaukee-area results, a similar pattern was there, although Crowley also seems to have done well in majority-Black areas of MKE.

5. I have no doubt Dems will reunify and all be working together to defeat Tiffany and knock the GOP out of power in all levels of state government this November. State Rep Hong knows firsthand how tyrannical the WisGOPs have been in the Capitol, and she is dedicated to doing her part to end it, despite this tough defeat.

[image or embed]

— Francesca Hong 홍윤정 (@francescahongwi.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 11:14 AM

Crowley should give Fran a prominent and visible role over the next 83 days of this campaign. And she has earned some kind of spot in Crowley's Administration, should he win and she want the gig (it would also be a nice pay bump from the $50K Hong pulls as a State Legislator, and health care benefits).

Yes, Hong's supporters are down right now, and feel the nomination they deserved was taken from them by the Dem establishment (you can see them all over social media). They have a right to be upset, after all the work Hong and they have put in to get to the position they were at. While Hong is impressively keeping her eyes on the big prize, it's understandable that fans and supporters will not want to hit the streets to support someone who snuck in at the last moment and won what Hong supporters thought was there. But by Sept. 1, it's time for those people to also see the big picture, stop election-denying forced-birther Tom Tiffany and other WisGOPs from having any power, and then push Crowley and other Dems to put in the improvements that are needed in this state.

6. Primary polls are nothing more than outlines of the state of play, not the "voice of God". Particularly when voters like most of the candidates in the race and are trying to tactically choose which is the best one to advance. Which adds to my final point.

6a. We need ranked choice voting in Wisconsin. Someone should not win a primary when a majority of voters either cast votes for people who later dropped out of the race, or they cannot stand the candidate that takes the plurality. And Wisconsin's "first past the post" system led to a lot of agonizing by voters like me in trying to figure out what was the best vote to cast that increased the chances of getting result I wanted. It shouldn't be that way, especially in primaries. The choices would have been much easier to make if I knew that I could vote for multiple candidates I liked, and make it much less likely that my decision wouldn't be a worthless endeavor, and allow an unacceptable outcome that could be catastrophic.

Dems should run on election reforms like ranked-choice voting, the pre-Election Day processing of absentee ballots, and allowing for communities like Milwaukee that have Central Count locations of absentee ballots be able to report their results as each ward is completed instead of have this stupid thing where everything has to be done before any absentee ballot results are reported. All would avoid a lot of the mess-ups and stresses that we dealt with in this Dem Guv primary.

7. WisGOPs did NOT want this outcome. They are now wrong-footed with an awful candidate heading up their side of the ballot in Tom Tiffany. And they may try the same "dangerous socialist other" BS with Crowley that they would have done against Hong, but that won't work with anyone that decides elections. Especially when Crowley won the primary by being attached to popular, moderate-coding Governor Evers. Meanwhile, Tiffany is tied at the...to Trumpian idiocy, lawlessness, and failure.

Crazy stuff, man. But I am feeling much better about November's prospects than I was at this time last night. LET'S GET IT.

Profits and productivity rise in America, while workers get less and consumers pay more

It may have gotten lost due to the release of the July jobs report on Friday, but the day before, productivity numbers were released for Q2 2026, and that measure keeps on rising.

Nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased 1.4 percent in the second quarter of 2026, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today, as output increased 1.7 percent and hours worked increased 0.3 percent. (All quarterly percent changes in this release are seasonally adjusted annualized rates.) From the same quarter a year ago, nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased 2.2 percent in the second quarter of 2026.

Unit labor costs in the nonfarm business sector increased 1.3 percent in the second quarter of 2026, reflecting a 2.7-percent increase in hourly compensation and a 1.4-percent increase in productivity. Unit labor costs increased 1.4 percent over the last four quarters.

But I’ll remind you that these are unit labor costs before inflation, and the same report says prices rose at an annualized rate of nearly 6% for Q2. When you look at it that way, workers were taking home less, and it was relatively cheap for companies to make products. So guess who takes the gains?

BLS calculates unit labor costs as the ratio of hourly compensation to labor productivity. Increases in hourly compensation tend to increase unit labor costs and increases in productivity tend to reduce them. Real hourly compensation, which takes into account consumer prices, decreased 3.1 percent in the second quarter of 2026, and decreased 0.1 percent over the last four quarters. The labor share, which is the percentage of output that accrues to workers in the form of compensation, was 52.9 percent in the second quarter of 2026, the lowest level in the series which begins in the first quarter of 1947.

Now combine that with what we saw in the July jobs report, which not only showed fewer jobs for that month, and May and June being revised lower by 103,000, but also had year-over-year wage growth drop to a 5-year low.

This is a continuation of a trend where businesses have been squeezing more output without having to add as many workers in recent years, as the BLS illustrates with these charts.

Later this month, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will release their first look at corporate profits for the inflation-wracked April-June period. If the productivity and jobs numbers are indicative, I bet those profit numbers will show a big increase from Q1, and accelerate what has already been an impressive (obscene?) runup in those numbers since 2020.

We don't often ID these higher profits as Robin Hood in reverse, where rich owners take the gains from workers, give smaller raises, and get all the benefits of higher prices. And that's before we even mention the tariff refunds that businesses are now getting, without those businesses reducing prices for everyday workers and consumers.

Nice "economy", isn't it?

Oil, interest rates and Trump/GOP borrowing all going up in the US

Remember about a week ago when oil markets were plummeting and the Trump Administration was saying a peace deal with Iran was on the way? I'm talking about the most recent time, not the 15 other times we’ve heard Peace is At Hand in the last few months.

Well, that hope is over. Again. And oil is back on the rise....now with a new lack of availability!

Oil prices jumped on Monday as hopes for a Washington-Tehran deal over the Strait of Hormuz faded and the US's Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell below 300 million barrels, hovering at its lowest level since the 1980s.

The SPR fell by 6.1 million barrels in August, reaching its lowest point since 1983, with inventories at 298.7 million barrels, according to data from the Department of Energy.

The US, like other countries, has been releasing stored crude to make up for supply disruptions sparked by the war in the Middle East, with the Trump administration ordering the release of 172 million barrels in March to steady global markets.

Oil ended up rising nearly $4 a barrel on Monday, finishing above $82 a barrel for the first time since the end of July. I'll add that the draw of 6.1 million barrels only covers the first week of the month, from Saturday, August 1 through Friday, August 7, and is the largest one-week drawdown in more than a month.

Know what else is back on the rise? Long-term bond yields, which touched 4.7% for the 10-year bond for US Treasuries on Monday and 5.25% for the 30-year bond. Check out the trend since bombs started falling on Iran at the end of February.

As much as Fed Chair and Trump confidant Kevin Warsh may want to avoid rate hikes for the benchmark Fed Funds rate, the US bond market is raising rates via their open market trades.

As an effect of the rising rates, we’ve seen expenses to pay off that US debt rise more in Federal Fiscal Year 2026 exceed the increases in either Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. That number comes from the Congressional Budget Office’s budget review for July, which came out on Monday.

Spending for Social Security benefits rose by $70 billion (or 5 percent) because of increases in average benefits and in the number of beneficiaries. That increase would have been greater but for a significant set of onetime retroactive payments that began in March 2025 and stemmed from the Social Security Fairness Act of 2023, which was enacted in January 2025.

■ Medicare outlays increased by $66 billion (or 8 percent) because of increased enrollment and higher payment rates for services.

■ Medicaid outlays increased by $45 billion (or 8 percent) largely because of rising costs per enrollee….

■ Outlays for net interest on the public debt rose by $117 billion (or 14 percent) because the debt was larger than it was in the first 10 months of fiscal year 2025 and because of higher long-term interest rates. Declines in short-term rates partially mitigated the overall rise in interest payments.

Auctions of new debt are slated to be coming at a faster clip in the coming months, as the US Treasury has now upped its estimate of borrowing needed for the July to September quarter, with nearly ¾ of a trillion dollars now projected to be pushed out.

During the July–September 2026 quarter, Treasury expects to borrow $739 billion in privately-held net marketable debt, assuming an end-of-September cash balance of $950 billion. The borrowing estimate is $68 billion higher than announced in May 2026, primarily due to lower projected net cash flows, partially offset by the higher-than-assumed beginning-of-quarter cash balance. Excluding the higher-than-assumed beginning-of-quarter cash balance, the current quarter borrowing estimate is $87 billion higher than announced in May.

That is a sizable increase in volume of borrowing compared to the 4th quarter of 2025 ($550 billion) and 1st three months of 2026 ($577 billion).

Another item that worth noting from the Treasury’s announcement is that they should stay steady in how much debt they are sending out at one time, with the exception of less borrowing in September as a large amount of taxes are paid, and more needed starting in the month after that.

Based on current forecasts, Treasury expects to maintain current auction sizes in benchmark bills in the coming weeks and anticipates potentially issuing a short-dated CMB to meet its cash management needs around the end of August. Given projections for receipts associated with the mid-September corporate and non-withheld tax date, Treasury expects to implement reductions to shorter-dated bill auction sizes during the month of September. In October, Treasury anticipates increasing auction sizes across the bill curve based on expected seasonal fiscal outflows. As always, Treasury will continue to evaluate near-term borrowing needs and assess additional adjustments to bill auction sizes as appropriate.

Another batch of 10-year and 30-year bonds will have their auctions this week, and that will be something that many look to in order to see if this Summer's rise in longer term rates will continue, and with it, higher costs in a county that is nearly at $40 trillion in overall debt.

Doesn't seem like any of this oil, interest rate or debt news is going in the right direction, does it?

A few turnout points ahead of Tuesday's primary

As someone who is both deeply interested in Tuesday's primary and as someone who is working the polls that day, I was curious to find out how many people might actually be voting in this thing. So I went back to the 2018 August vote, which was also when there was a contested race for Governor for the Democrats.

Overall, there was just under 995,000 votes cast in August 2018, but there was also a contested US Senate primary for the GOP (do you remember when Leah Vukmir was a rising star in WisGOP World? Until Tammy Baldwin beat her by double digits that Fall and she went away). Since you can't vote for more than one party in the primary, there was a split in who voted for who, and there were only 538,857 votes cast on the Dem side.

Tony Evers won comfortably with more than twice as many votes as the next candidate, but he barely exceeded 225,000 votes. So it's not very high numbers we are dealing with in these things. And not surprisingly, the places where the Dem votes came from in 2018 is more toward heavily-blue Milwaukee and Dane Counties, while the suburban WOW Counties in Southeastern Wisconsin and the Fox Valley's BOW Counties don't loom as large as they do in November.

But let's also point out that while Milwaukee and Dane Counties made up nearly 40% of the votes in 2018's Governor primary, there still was more than 60% cast in the other 70 Wisconsin counties, and even outstate counties will make up a significant portion of the electorate.

I would anticipate quite a bit more than 538,000 votes being cast for the Dem Guv primary on Tuesday. Most of that is due to there being no seriously contested statewide primary for the GOP, so casual voters will go for where the heat is in this election, which is on the Dem side (yes, there may be a few dweeby GOPs who may try to vote in the Dem primary to advance Hong. But their numbers are small and they should be careful for what they wish for).

My very unscientific guess is that it means around 700,000+ votes would beon the Dem side, and maybe more like 750,000, given that voting-age population has grown a bit in the 8 years since then. The overwhelming majority of those votes will be on Election Day, since the Wisconsin Elections Commission says there have been a little over 265,000 votes cast so far overall (and that includes all parties).

But even though there will be many more votes cast in 2026's Dem primary, I'm not sure the Dems' Guv winner will have all that much more than Evers' 2018 total of 225,000+. Dems have 7 candidates on the ballot, even though 3 of those candidates have suspended their campaigns, and I think it's conceivable that 8-10% of the votes go to those 3 candidates that left the race, especially since the Elections Commission said "no backsies" for people who already sent in their ballots.

That math was also part of the reason I was going around and around on who to vote for (I eventually settled on Crowley and voted for him yesterday), because I do think Hong has a solid base around 35%, with the other 65% up in the air for all the Dem candidates including Fran. If the goal is to keep Hong from winning, there will likely have to be at least 2/3 of those other 65% to consolidate around one candidate. And given the 8-10% of votes for the candidates that are already out, it may be more like 3/4 of the up-for-grabs non-Hong votes at this point.

We'll see if it happens. And we'll see where the turnout is coming from, especially since there seems to be a significant difference between younger and older voters - something Crowley said may go in his favor, since older people are more likely vote in primaries. Which feels like a bit of hopium there, but who honestly knows at this point?