Food and Energy Costs Not Part of Inflation Report

Mark Belling was the guest host for Rush Limbaugh today. I found it difficult to listen to him, he's got an adenoidal type voice, but he taught me something I didn't know - I didn't realize that when the government figures out inflation, they don't include food and energy costs.

That seems to me the height of stupidity - those are the two things that always go up, and that the poorest among us can't afford unless they get help from the government (and our tax dollars) to pay for it.

According to Wikipedia:

Core inflation is a measure of inflation for a subset of consumer prices that excludes food and energy prices, which rise and fall more than other prices in the short term. The Federal Reserve Board pays particular attention to the core inflation rate to get a better estimate of long-term future inflation trends overall.