Price increases get closer to St. Tammany

High and higher the prices go, for almost everything—and now we are seeing price increases affecting more-and-more in our own St. Tammany backyard.
Due to rising diesel fuel costs the bill for garbage service is probably going up $2 a month for most parish residents. And this Thursday night at the Parish Council meeting there is a request from Parish President Mike Cooper for the council to roll the parish property tax millage to the maximum in four different categories. While it won’t be a major cost hit for residents of St. Tammany, it all adds up to virtually everything costing more these days.
Home purchases will also cost more as mortgage rates are being hiked by the Federal Reserve, all in an effort to slow down inflation in the United States at a 40-year high. And why are all these prices and expenses for American citizens going through the roof?
You can backtrack on almost everything to the fact oil and gas production in the United States was virtually shut down by the Biden Administration immediately when he took office a year-and-a-half ago. Gas and diesel are needed for all kinds of transportation to get products to market, or to run our garbage trucks, or virtually everything else that is part of our American lifestyle. We need fuel to operate those things in more ways than most people realize.
The most insulting part of all this for Americans is for Biden to blame Vladimir Putin for the gas increase, or the war in Ukraine for grocery store prices being so high. Our price increases began when the previous oil independent U.S. was dramatically changed to now make us dependent on foreign oil.
But while so many lower and middle class American families are struggling far worse than the big shots in Washington want to acknowledge, none of these leaders feels the pain the way it is beginning to hit senior citizens on fixed incomes, or lower earning men and women who were just making it before.
When asked when all the prices will start coming down the president said, “when the war in Ukraine is ended,” or one other comment of “this will be going on for a while.” Where is the honesty? You have to be a fool to believe that.
Many of us are fortunate enough to be managing, even though studies say most of us are now expected to spend over $6,000 a year more for gas and groceries than a year ago. But $6,000 is a lot of money to many Americans, yet they are being told by federal leaders to just make the best of it.
The situation won’t have a chance of changing until the November elections so maybe now that so many citizens are being hit in the pocketbook with everyday expense increases, it just might be thing to get people to vote for a change.
That’s the only way any of this improves since it’s clear the current administration has no concern for thousands of Americans who are beginning to decide between food, medicine or gas on their income that is being swallowed up by these out-of-control increases in everything.