McLean County Times

State Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Decatur) is blasting Gov. J.B. Pritzker, House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch (D-Westchester) and Senate President Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) for making the decision to travel out of the country at a time when he feels the pandemic and other issues are raging out-of-control back at home.

“The Governor, the Speaker and Senate president enjoying a pint of merry in Old England,” Rose captioned a photo on Twitter of the three gathered and toasting at an English pub after a week of pitching the state as a green energy hub to world leaders at a United Nations summit.

“Meanwhile, inflation, COVID and crime continue to surge!” he added.

The consumer price index has jumped 6.2 percent over the last year, the biggest yearlong jump in more than three decades, and higher prices are expected to last at least until 2022.

The sharp spike in consumer prices comes after White House officials described the change as being “transitory.”

 “It’s a large blow against the transitory narrative,” former Obama administration economic adviser Jason Furman told The Associated Press. “Inflation is not slowing. It’s maintaining a red-hot pace.’’

In homes across the country, bacon prices are now up 20 percent over the past year, egg prices are up nearly 12 percent and gasoline prices have surged by 50 percent and used car prices have soared by 26 percent.

While arguing at least some of the inflation was predictable as the country has rebounded from slowdowns caused by the pandemic, including the loss of some 22 million jobs, Furman, now an economist at the Harvard Kennedy School, adds misguided policy has played a role in things becoming as bad as they are.

“They poured kerosene on the fire,” he said of much of the government spending, including President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. “Inflation is a lot higher in the United States than it is in Europe. Europe is going through the same supply shocks as the United States is, the same supply chain issues. But they didn’t do nearly as much stimulus.’’

Meanwhile, Rose recently filed a bill that would mean harsher penalties for carjacking crimes.

Filed in early October, Senate Bill 298 seeks to amend the Criminal Code of 2012, with the proposed amendment also calling for enhanced sentencing in the case of weapons possessed or used by convicted felons, aggravated discharge of a firearm and the use of a “stolen or illegally acquired firearm in the commission of an offense.”

Rose also recently expressed his displeasure with a National Archives campaign to place warning labels on some of the country’s most celebrated founding documents.

“A trigger warning on the Constitution,” Rose recently posted on Twitter, referencing a page on the National Archives website. “Who the hell do these idiots think they are? Enough is enough.”

With the move being largely seen as part of the National Archives’ much talked about “institutional commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility,” the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights are among the documents having been stamped with the labels, The Daily Citizen reported.

This development comes after a National Archives task force concluded that historical documents’ portrayal of the founding fathers was “too positive,” according to Reclaim the Net. Top archive officials stress they are only flagging content that is viewed as “potentially harmful,” with staffers defining offensive content as that which is “discriminatory towards or exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, religion, and more.”