Friday, March 29, 2024

Inflation Comes for Chocolate Prices.

As Easter weekend approaches, cocoa futures have reached record-breaking highs due to an escalating supply shortage. The crisis has left chocolate manufacturers desperately searching for new sources of cocoa beans.

Increasing demand saw cocoa futures in New York climb to as high as $10,047 per ton on Tuesday — marking an increase of approximately 4.1 percent on the session. The price of cocoa has significantly increased over the past week and is currently up 150 percent since the start of the year.

One of the key drivers of the cocoa bean shortage is the ongoing agricultural crisis in Ghana. A failure of cocoa crops has left the Ghana Cocoa Board unable to secure foreign financing to pay farmers due to a lack of beans, which are used as collateral.

The cocoa market was already grappling with weak harvests due to adverse weather conditions and crop diseases across West Africa, the globe’s primary cocoa-growing area. Due to the upsurge in cocoa pricing, consumers will likely pay higher prices for cocoa-based products, including chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies. Commodities market analysts also warn that by Easter 2025, the cost of chocolate may surge even higher if cocoa-tree diseases, inclement weather, and elevated sugar prices continue to exacerbate the deficit.

Elevated prices driven by inflation and supply-chain breakdowns continue to dog the Biden government as the Democrat President kicks off his re-election bid in earnest. Two key indices monitored by the Federal Reserve have shown an acceleration in the rate of inflation in the U.S. In February, Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted that high prices for American consumers are likely here to stay.

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As Easter weekend approaches, cocoa futures have reached record-breaking highs due to an escalating supply shortage. The crisis has left chocolate manufacturers desperately searching for new sources of cocoa beans. show more
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13.7 Million Illegals So Far Under Biden, Proving Trump’s Predictions Right.

New data shows that the number of illegal aliens in the United States has risen to 13.7 million under President Joe Biden, marking an increase of 37 percent. In addition, the total foreign-born population in the U.S. was an estimated 51.4 million in February 2024, a new record high. The number of foreign-born individuals in the country has increased by 6.4 million since Biden took office in January 2021.

In October, President Trump told The National Pulse exclusively that he believed Biden would preside over the importation of upwards of 15 million illegals. The new data shows Trump is likely to end up almost exactly correct by the end of the Biden term.

An average of 172,000 legal and illegal immigrants arrived in the U.S. each month under President Biden. However, the data — from the Center for Immigrant Studies (CIS) and based on the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) — may not fully account for the number of illegal aliens in the country.

The National Pulse previously reported that a retired immigration judge uncovered evidence that the Biden government has released over 100,000 illegals into the U.S. each month. This suggests the Census Bureau’s survey may be drastically undercounting the number of illegal aliens entering the country.

A bulk of the immigrant arrivals into the U.S. under Biden have come from Latin America — although other data suggests that  African, Middle Eastern, and Asian illegal aliens are beginning to comprise greater shares of those encountered by border agents. Additionally, among the 6.4 million who’ve entered the U.S. in the past three years, 44 percent lack having attained an education level beyond high school.

Immigrants now comprise 15.5 percent of the U.S. population. Last year, the Census Bureau released an estimate stating the U.S. wouldn’t hit that number until 2040. Under former President Donald Trump, just 42,000 immigrants were entering the U.S. each month — with the number trending on a decline prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Obama government saw 76,000 immigrants entering the country monthly.

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New data shows that the number of illegal aliens in the United States has risen to 13.7 million under President Joe Biden, marking an increase of 37 percent. In addition, the total foreign-born population in the U.S. was an estimated 51.4 million in February 2024, a new record high. The number of foreign-born individuals in the country has increased by 6.4 million since Biden took office in January 2021. show more
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HOLY WEEK: Last Supper, First Eucharist.

Maundy Thursday, as the fifth day of Holy Week is known, was truly the beginning of the end for Jesus. Already on Spy Wednesday, He had warned of His coming death, and Judas had conspired with Caiphas, the high priest, to hand Him over in exchange for thirty pieces of silver.Thursday was the day of […]

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Jan 6 Defendant Released.

January 6 defendant Kevin Seefried of Laurel, Delaware, has been granted early release from prison after the Supreme Court agreed to take up a relevant appeal.

Seefried was handed a three-year prison term for “obstruction of an official proceeding,” with additional periods of one year and six months on misdemeanor charges.

The obstruction charge is at the center of the Supreme-Court-approved case Fischer v. United States, which questions the novel way Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has used it to prosecute many Jan 6 protestors.

While the DOJ argues the disruption of the 2020 election’s certification caused by protestors amounted to obstruction of an official proceeding, the relevant laws were passed in the wake of the Enron scandal. They were not intended to target protestors, but people who doctored and destroyed documents to sabotage an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Should Fischer succeed in the Supreme Court, a large number of protestors tried on obstruction of an official proceeding charges could be freed. Moreover, “conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding” and “obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding” are among the charges special prosecutor Jack Smith has leveled at Donald Trump, and Fischer‘s success could cut the case against the former president “in half.”

Years on from 2021, Jan 6 prosecutions are accelerating rather than decelerating. Prosecutors are targeting protestors for increasingly minor offenses, including MAGA influencer Isabella DeLuca, whose alleged crime is touching a table that was later passed out of a broken window.

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January 6 defendant Kevin Seefried of Laurel, Delaware, has been granted early release from prison after the Supreme Court agreed to take up a relevant appeal. show more
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Finally, A Win for Election Integrity!

Republicans won a major battle over election integrity in Pennsylvania yesterday, as three Democrat judges voted in favor of signature verification for mail-in voting.

The details: The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, which is made up of three Democrat-appointed judges, ruled 2-1 to overturn a lower court’s previous ruling that said the state could not enforce a “dated signature requirement” for mail-in ballots.

Back up: In November 2022, the RNC sued to ensure signature verification, and the state Supreme Court ruled in their favor. But this past November, a federal court struck down that ruling, leading to this most recent appeal and judgment…

The 3rd Circuit declared: “The Pennsylvania General Assembly has decided that mail-in voters must date the declaration on the return envelope of their ballot to make their vote effective… thus, failure to comply renders a ballot invalid under Pennsylvania law.”

Big picture: In 2020, Pennsylvania saw 2,637,065 votes cast by mail-in ballot. And according to the official tally, Joe Biden won by roughly 80,000 votes.

  • Translation: Even the slightest amount of mail-in voter fraud could have been the deciding factor in that race.

Pennsylvania is critical. If it’s going to allow vote-by-mail, then having signature verification is a major step toward ensuring the upcoming election is secure.

This article is adapted from the free ‘Wake Up Right’ newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

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Republicans won a major battle over election integrity in Pennsylvania yesterday, as three Democrat judges voted in favor of signature verification for mail-in voting. show more
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