The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Great to be together. In a few moments we Will talk with Shawn Carney. Shawn Carney is the founders of 40 the Founder and CEO of 40 Days for Life. Fascinating and wonderful group that does stuff across the country, and he’ll talk about some incidents. Things have changed. The dynamic has changed in terms of the treatment of people on the sidewalks. Where they do a Lot of their protesting and he’s. He’s concerned about it. He’s also a he’s a really interesting interview, so we’ll talk with him. And we’ll also, I will fill you. In, in just a moment about. Upcoming events later in the program, I’ll tell you about Eagle Council, which is happening in Saint Louis in a few weeks. So we’ll talk about that more.
But welcome first visit proamericareport.com proamericareport.com. And if you go to there, you can sign up for the daily WYNK, the daily e-mail that comes into your. E-mail account each morning at 8:00 AM and you can get that by signing up 8:00 AM East Coast, 5:00 AM Pacific so.
But here’s what I want to go back and recover. For you that there was a there is a a report out. I think it was early Friday on the jobs, the July jobs report, which showed that only 187,000 jobs were created but unemployment fell to 3.5%. So the unemployment number looks and feels good, right? I mean, there’s a there’s an argument within that. That people will tell you that. Hey, wait a second. It looks like the jobs. It looks like the. Jobs created are not good enough jobs. They’re not. They’re not significant jobs. They tend to be different jobs, whatever. But still, you can only look at the trajectory. You can only look at the trajectory and and I think it gives you some sense. Forget about the specifics. I think in general in general, I think it’s it’s true that the unemployed, the unemployment is in a pretty good spot. I I I don’t know how to argue with that. I I do feel like there’s there is a. I feel like there’s a way that the Biden administration lies about the numbers that I don’t know, and we can’t tell, but I don’t think you can dispute it. But here’s what I want to recover.
You may remember a couple of years ago I talked about what I called. The I I called it the Eagle Index, the Eagle index of the economy and I said if you look at unemployment, that’s an important one. If you look at the stock market, that’s an important, important one. But they those two. Only sort of portend 2 things. The stock market is about big business and the unemployment is about individual workers. So what else can you look at? And one of the ones that I. One that I look at is as I told you, is small business confidence, small business confidence. Small business confidence is at record lows in the last year. And it is coming down off of incredible confidence in the in the Trump administration. The the positive message of what was happening in terms of small business and how they felt and you know what I’ve always said is the the economy. Someone else told me this, but it’s the best way to think about it. The economy is about. 90% psychology. It’s how people feel about what’s going on, and then they move and and and and then it’s 10% of what I don’t know because I can’t ever. I can never tell what the Fed really does and if it helps anything and all that kind of stuff. So it’s. That’s a big factor is the confidence, especially of small businesses, they drive more things, they drive more of the of the how people relate to things than anything else. And the other one is consumer confidence. And consumer confidence. Has been ticking up a little bit, which is good. It, but it’s it’s still way, way down from. A couple of. Years ago, people were it dropped off the Cliff again when Biden got into office, the psychology changed. And I think it’s taking a while for the basics to hopefully hold.
But here’s what I want to point to. The reality right now is I talk to people all the time. And people tell me that they lack. They just don’t feel good about what’s going on. They’re concerned about the. Direction of things. They’re not sure what to make of it all. Growing more and more. I I did a I did a long visit a while ago to Pasadena, CA and I spent some time talking to different folks there. And you know, the Pasadena is kind of a mixed city. It’s it’s got some low income folks, but it’s also got a lot of wealth. It’s been around for a long time. But in talking to people, there was a great uncertainty. Two different people told me that they were uncertain. How to to approach Going to college for their kids. That they weren’t even sure their kids. Should go to College that they were not sure that it was, you know, worth it that it was. Gonna work out. There’s a. Problem right now and I do blame. The social media for it in the sense that there’s a problem that people have, that they’re almost too easily made anxious. You you don’t even have insulation from the anxiety that comes, you don’t have insulation when there’s a talk of a recession and there still is talk of a recession and that you know the the stock market had a correction this week in part because of. Of the credit ratings, the credit ratings announced that they’re down. They’re downgrading America from AAA to AA plus or something. And and someone said, what does that mean for me? What does it mean for an individual? And I think the thing that it means for an individual mostly is everybody agrees is they’re going to have to raise interest rates. And so they’re going to raise interest rates again. And people and. So the stock market took a A. Dive and people felt bad about it in real time. Now, maybe it’s better to feel bad about things in real time. I don’t. I don’t know if that’s, but I know we can’t go back. I know we can’t go back now we are where we are.
And so the question is what are the signals that we should expect and hope for from our government? From our leaders, how can we get the signals that can give people the confidence?
And one of them coming out of the of the pandemic, in my opinion, needs to be accountability. It needs to be more transparency. We need to know where the billions went to Ukraine. That’s true. But we also need to know where the billions are that went to pandemic spending. That went to different areas. We need to know where the money’s going. People need to feel. Like Ohh I know another one. I went to a a city I. Think it was in Chicago Area and the. So I said to someone more every corner has a has. Painted on the ground. A brand new crosswalk and also bike paths. I mean every corner when you got to the intersections, they had them all marked out really bright, brand new. And the person said ohh yeah, that was in the one of the the the acts that Biden signed had spending in it and it it had a huge chunk of money for that little town. Not a little that that town to do. That to do paint the paint the streets and OK, I guess that’s not a bad thing. I mean we want safety on the streets where people are crossing and all that. But you know what it is is somebody gets paid to do that, somebody gets. Somebody gets your tax dollars to do that. And and people, we need to have more transparency and then accountability. But I’m not even trying to get accountability right now. I I I think that that’s so much harder to do because of the reality of it. We should do it. We should strive.
But transparency is easier to do. You know, we’ve had on the program Adam Andrzejewski of Open the Books.com. And that’s all he does is put stuff out and work. He works really hard at it, but he’s a nonprofit, and he’s a nonprofit that’s constantly having to raise its own funds and do its own thing. Does a great job.
But you know, we ought to have a government that says, hey, you know what? We’re gonna make it transparent, and we’re gonna Brag about it. We’re going to show you where the money went that I I’m trying to talk about things that increase confidence. Increased confidence, more confidence in the system. Is going to be more valuable.
Which brings me, as always, back to politics for one second or back to the political reality right now of the of the Allegations against Donald Trump, the one thing that I haven’t heard people say enough Is no matter what you think about the elections of 2020, if you think they were perfect, or if you think they were flawed, everyone agrees and admits that the elections are not auditable. And they’re not transparent. They all admit that. So that’s not something new that and that that you know we we can’t. Yeah, it’s not, it’s not readily auditable but you have to trust the system. You know you have to you have to trust the system just trust us, but it’s not auditable. It’s not transparent, but you have to trust us and the checks and balances for your trust of the system. The election system are in 50 plus states. Many, many more jurisdictions and they have to be done six months before the election and then you’re not allowed to object. It’s a crazy thing that the demand.
The demand of the of the facts in the Trump case is that you must accept that the election was completely on the up and up and without fraud. Because why? Because they say so. And if you don’t say so, you’re a criminal. This is a pretty incredible position to be put in, so that’s why that’s my only thought on this.
On the economy, it doesn’t feel like the economy is in the right direction. It doesn’t look like from the Eagle index that it’s in a good spot. You know, consumer confidence is down. Small business confidence is down, but I have to admit that that unemployment is down, which is a positive, and the stock market is up so. As I said to you, the Individuals probably can get jobs if they want them. Too many probably don’t want to get them. That’s a different problem, but it’s a problem. And then the stock market, big businesses and lots of portfolios are up. So that’s a positive. But on the two other ones, confidence in the system, which is, as I said, a big, big part of it, it’s it’s down and worrisome. So there you have it. That’s what what you need to know today is look out, look out for consumer and small business confidence when they’re down like they are. It’s a problem. And people are anxious.
We’ll take a break. We’ll be right back. It’s Ed Martin here on The Pro America Report back in a moment.
