Starbucks

The left has been salivating over the prospect of voting Donald Trump out of office in 2020, but now something has happened that could change everything. On Sunday, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced that he is “seriously considering running for president as a centrist independent”. If Schultz officially decides to run, and it looks like that is almost certainly going to happen, then a Trump victory in 2020 will become almost inevitable. Unless something dramatic takes place, Trump is going to have the support of at least 40 to 45 percent of American voters in 2020. But the key was going to be finding that last 5 to 10 percent that he needed to push him over the top. Unfortunately for Trump, he does not do well with moderate independent voters, and Democratic strategists were counting on those voters to help them beat Trump. But if a “centrist independent” like Schultz enters the race, he will inevitably steal a lot of those voters from the Democrats, and that is why the left is freaking out so much right now.

There is certainly room in the race for someone like Schultz. If faced with a choice between Donald Trump and a radical leftist such as Kamala Harris, many Americans would be open to a third option. And since Schultz is a billionaire, he could certainly provide the resources necessary to mount a serious independent bid.

But he would not have a prayer of actually winning. 40 percent of the country is going to vote Republican no matter what, and 40 percent of the country is going to vote Democrat no matter what. If things go well for Schultz he could end up with 10 percent of the vote, and if things go perfectly for Schultz he could end up with 20 percent of the vote.

And he is likely to take far more votes from the Democrats than from the Republicans because everyone knows that he was a lifelong Democrat. He was a big donor to top Democrats, and he voted Democrat his entire life.

So a three way race would be a dream come true for Trump. In such a scenario Trump may only receive 45 percent of the national vote, but Schultz could pull enough support away from the Democratic candidate to push Trump over the top.

If you are a Trump supporter, send Schultz a message on Twitter encouraging him to run, because it looks like it isn’t going to take too much encouragement to push him over the edge. In fact, it is being reported that he has already spent many months preparing an independent presidential campaign…

Before announcing his presidential ambitions this week, former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz secretly undertook a months-long effort to prepare an independent presidential campaign against the nation’s two-party political system, deploying more than six national polls and laying the groundwork for paid advertising that could debut in the next two months.

All of that effort tells me that Howard Schultz is not just “thinking about it”. He really wants to do this, and that is extremely good news for Trump.

On Monday, Schultz released his brand new book entitled “From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America”, which is essentially his way of introducing himself as a presidential candidate to the American people. If you will remember, Barack Obama did the same thing when he first ran for president. Now Schultz is going on a book tour, and on this tour he will “test the appeal of his ideas”…

An early advertising effort, made possible by Schultz’s net worth of about $3.4 billion, would be designed to help Schultz show early promise in national polls during his book tour, which he has described as a time to test the appeal of his ideas.

But if he is a lifelong Democrat, then why didn’t he just run as a Democrat?

Well, these days the Democratic Party has taken a radical turn to the left, and Schultz simply doesn’t agree with many of the socialist policy positions that they are currently espousing…

But in 2019, he says he cannot in good conscience run as a Democrat. He is considering an independent run. “What the Democrats are proposing is something that is as false as the wall,” he says, indicating “free” health care, “free” college, and the entire litany of “free” things “which the country cannot afford.” He worries — oh, bless his pointy little head! — about the national debt, unfunded liabilities, and other examples of fiscal recklessness. He thinks that the Democrats’ current “liquidate the kulaks as a class” approach to taxes may prove counterproductive to the long-term interests of the United States as a whole. He worries that “extremists” have taken over both parties.

And in this political environment, a moderate white billionaire would simply not have a prayer of winning the Democratic nomination.

So if he wants to run for president, his only option is to do it as an independent, and the fact that he might actually do this is really stressing out those on the left. The New York Times just published an editorial entitled “Howard Schultz, Please Don’t Run for President”, and Henry Blodget is urging Schultz “to go home”…

Unfortunately, right now, our political system is built around only two major parties.

The best way to defeat a candidate from one party is to vote for the candidate from the other.

So if you want to see President Trump fired in 2020, you should probably urge Howard Schultz to go home.

And the media attacks on Schultz have already begun. For example, a Slate article is painting him as someone that was horrible to his employees…

For one, during Schultz’s long tenure as CEO, Starbucks repeatedly fought against workers’ attempts to organize a union. In 2008, for example, a National Labor Relations Board judge found that the company had illegally fired three workers for their union activities, as well as violated other aspects of the law. Starbucks workers in our country still don’t have a union. Although the right wing has tried for years to paint unions as extreme, a recent Gallup poll showed that 62 percent of Americans approve of labor unions; similarly, an MIT survey found that most workers wanted a greater voice on the job, and that almost half would join a union if given the opportunity. Squelching union organizing efforts may be routine for companies, but it’s not where our country’s political center lies.

Starbucks also pays its workers poverty wages. According to PayScale, an online salary information company, the average hourly rate for Starbucks employees is around $11 per hour. Baristas average $9.77 per hour, and wages don’t reach $15 per hour until a worker becomes a retail store manager ($17.44) or assistant manager ($15.17).

If there is enough abuse from the left, it is still possible that Schultz could pull the plug on his campaign before it has even begun.

But if you are a Trump supporter, you definitely do not want that to happen, because having at least one viable third party candidate is probably the key to Trump winning in 2020. So everyone needs to encourage Schultz to run, because we absolutely do not want a radical socialist like Kamala Harris in the White House.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the nation. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

The basic necessities in life just keep getting more expensive. On Tuesday, Hershey announced that the price of all of their chocolate bars is going to go up by about 8 percent. That is particularly distressing to me, because I am known to love chocolate. But if it was just chocolate that was becoming significantly more expensive perhaps that would be okay. Last month, it was coffee. J.M. Smucker, one of the largest coffee producers in the United States, announced that it planned to raise coffee prices by about 9 percent. And Starbucks has announced a bunch of price increases across the board on their coffee products. Of course we could all survive without chocolate and coffee, but as you will see below just about every food category is becoming more expensive. If this keeps up, could we eventually see armed guards in grocery stores and on food trucks?

On Wednesday, Robert Wenzel of the Economic Policy Journal shared some new data that has just been released by the federal government about food inflation over the past year. Without a doubt, these numbers are quite startling…

According to the latest data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, year-over-year gains in some food products at the producer level have been truly spectacular.

Eggs for fresh use are up 33.9%.

Pork is up 28%.

Processed turkeys are up 20.4%.

Dairy products are up 10.7%.

Fresh and dry vegetables are up 8.4%.

Fresh fruits and melons are up 7.5%.

Unfortunately, paychecks for most American families are not going up at similar rates.

What that means is more pain when we make our trips to the grocery store. Things have gotten so bad that even the mainstream media is running stories about this. For example, this excerpt comes from a recent CNBC article…

“I try to do all my local errands in one day and go up to the mall,” said Helon Rapfogel of New Jersey. “I used to go maybe twice or three times a week, and now I just go one day a week, if that much. And I try to consolidate things.”

Rapfogel said that higher costs for food and gas are hitting her overall budget.

“You sacrifice things. Like not doing an ice cream run during the week with the kids. [That could] hurt the local retailers, and we don’t want to do that … but we may have to,” she said.

At the grocery store, meat, dairy and fruit prices are all up substantially. People are even paying more for lattes at their local coffee shops. And it’s not just food—gas prices have jumped sharply on geopolitical unrest, and at the moment there’s no relief in sight.

So why is all of this happening?

Well, the truth is that a lot of factors have combined to produce something of a perfect storm.

First of all, we should talk about Federal Reserve money printing. Since the last financial crisis, the Fed has been on an unprecedented money printing spree. This has dramatically pushed up the prices of stocks, commodities and just about everything else. It was naive to think that we wouldn’t eventually see substantial food inflation as well. Just look at what “quantitative easing” has done to M1 since the last recession…

When you have more dollars chasing roughly the same amount of goods and services of course prices are going to go up.

It is just basic economics.

But according to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, there is absolutely no reason to be concerned. The following is a video of her telling the press her view on inflation that I shared in a previous article…

But crazy Fed money printing is not the only reason why food prices are going up.

The endless drought in the western half of the country is severely hurting food production as well. The size of the U.S. cattle herd has shrunk for seven years in a row, and it is now the smallest that it has been since 1951. And the drought is hitting the state of California particularly hard, and considering the fact that it produces nearly half of all of our fresh produce that is more than a little bit alarming. Yes, we are more technologically advanced that we used to be, but we are not advanced enough to overcome an epic multi-year drought in half the nation.

In addition, we are also dealing with the worst pork virus to ever hit the United States right now. Porcine epidemic diarrhea has already wiped out about 10 percent of the pig population in the U.S., and approximately 100,000 more are dying each week. As you saw above, pork prices are already up 28 percent over the past 12 months, and if a solution is not found to this virus the price increases are going to get much worse.

Down in Florida, citrus growers are facing a horrific outbreak of citrus greening disease. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that orange production in the U.S. will be down 18 percent compared to last year, and it is expected that this will be the worst crop in close to 30 years.

Another plague known as the TR4 fungus has hit banana production. According to CNBC, this horrible fungus may eventually completely wipe out the variety of bananas that we eat today…

Banana lovers take note: The world’s supply of the fruit is under attack from a fungus strain that could wipe out the popular variety that Americans eat.

“It’s a very serious situation,” said Randy Ploetz, a professor of plant pathology at the University of Florida who in 1989 originally discovered a strain of Panama disease, called TR4, that may be growing into a serious threat to U.S. supplies of the fruit and Latin American producers.

“There’s nothing at this point that really keeps the fungus from spreading,” he said in an interview with CNBC.

While there are nearly 1,000 varieties of bananas, the most popular is the Cavendish, which accounts for 45 percent of the fruit’s global crop—and the one Americans mostly find in their supermarkets.

For decades, Americans have been able to go to the grocery stores and fill up their carts with massive amounts of very inexpensive food.

But just because it has been that way for so many years does not mean that it will be that way in the future.

Right now, there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity, and that number will only get worse as food prices go even higher.

It is getting to the point where it is not too hard to imagine desperate people holding up food trucks and robbing grocery stores in order to feed themselves and their families.

Let us hope that we don’t see anything like that any time soon, but we are moving in that direction.

Just a few years ago, the notion that we could ever see armed guards on food trucks or in grocery stores in the United States was absolutely unthinkable.

But now, it is not so crazy.

So what do you think? Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

The One Thing That Could Almost Guarantee A Trump Victory In 2020 Is On The Verge Of Happening

If This Keeps Up, They Will Have To Start Putting Armed Guards On Food Trucks