It has taken a bit of time after Christmas to get back into the swing of things. A week during Christmas while in Breckenridge, I spent it in bed due to Attitude Altitude sickness. One night I was looking at the vertical wood slats on the wall which appeared to be populated with numbers similar to an Excel Spread Sheet. Looking at numbers and doing quick comparisons in manufacturing, distribution, and planning was a good part of my job. I reached for my laptop to turn it off and realized it was not there. Asked my wife if she saw them. Nope . . . I was hallucinating. Pretty good collection of articles covering a wide expanse of interests. I do read these. Business and Economy How TSMC and US-China Tensions May Dictate Fate of Global
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run75441 considers the following as important: climate change, Healthcare, In-Box, Journalism, law, politics, US EConomics, US/Global Economics
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Dean Baker writes Health insurance killing: Economics does have something to say
NewDealdemocrat writes Retail Real Sales
Angry Bear writes Planned Tariffs, An Economy Argument with Political Implications
Joel Eissenberg writes Will DOGE be an exercise in futility?
It has taken a bit of time after Christmas to get back into the swing of things. A week during Christmas while in Breckenridge, I spent it in bed due to Attitude Altitude sickness. One night I was looking at the vertical wood slats on the wall which appeared to be populated with numbers similar to an Excel Spread Sheet. Looking at numbers and doing quick comparisons in manufacturing, distribution, and planning was a good part of my job. I reached for my laptop to turn it off and realized it was not there. Asked my wife if she saw them. Nope . . . I was hallucinating.
Pretty good collection of articles covering a wide expanse of interests. I do read these.
Business and Economy
How TSMC and US-China Tensions May Dictate Fate of Global Economy, businessinsider.com, Avery Hartman and Jacob Zinkula. The fate of the global economy may rest on the shoulders of one company: TSMC.
Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, others have cut more than 60,000 employees, (cnbc.com), Ashley Capoot and Sofia Pitt. The tech industry has seen a string of layoffs in the face of uncertain economic conditions.
Americans cut spending again in December 2022, (qz.com), Nate DiCamillo. Americans apparently got their holiday shopping done early last year. Consumers spent around 1% less in December than they had in the month before—about the same drop in spending that occurred in November.
US companies bought goods at a discount in December, (qz.com), Nate DiCamillo. The Producer Price Index fell 0.5% in December compared to last month because of a 1.6% decline in the price of goods that producers sell. The price of services in the index rose 0.1%.
The Hidden Cost of Cheap TVs, The Atlantic, Justn Pot. Perhaps the biggest reason TVs have gotten so much cheaper than other products is that your TV is watching you and profiting off the data it collects.
What Is “Core PCE Services Ex-Housing” Anyway? employamerica.org, Alex Williams. The Fed is worried inflation will continue until wage growth comes down or unemployment ticks up based on the continued strength in “Core PCE Services ex-Housing”. But the Fed is wrong to be so confident.
A New Era for Worker Power, rooseveltinstitute.org, Alí R. Bustamante. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated employers’ willingness to exploit workers and subvert the public good in pursuit of profit—from underpaying essential workers to dodging taxes by misclassifying workers.
Healthcare
Unredacted NIH Emails Show Efforts to Rule Out Lab Origin of Covid. (theintercept.com), Jimmy Tobias. Drawing on “comparative analysis of genomic data,” the paper’s authors wrote that “our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated construct.”
Medicare Overpayment for Outpatient Medication, Supreme Court Ruling, NEJM, Wasan Kumar and Kevin Schulman. The Court found that CMS had adjusted reimbursement for 340B-covered hospitals without surveying hospitals on their acquisition costs. The result of the ruling is that reimbursement rates for all hospitals must be uniform.
Prison Hospital Data Is Omitted From Federal Data Sets, Health Affairs, Authors. the absence of prison hospitals from federal health care data sets suggests that incarcerated patients do not receive the same degree of health care oversight as their non-incarcerated peers.
China Says COVID Outbreak Has Infected 80% of Population, medscape.com, BEIJING (Reuters. The possibility of a big COVID-19 rebound in China over the next two or three months is remote as 80% of people have been infected.
Gun Violence Is America’s Never-Ending Plague, The New Yorker, John Cassidy. the reaction to each new massacre is depressingly predictable: denial and obfuscation from the gun lobby and its political stooges.
Held Hostage: The Toxicity of Physician Noncompete Clauses, MedPage Today, Jeremy Peterson. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently proposed a new rule opens in a new tab or window banning noncompete clauses in employee contracts.
Death by 10,000 Clicks: The Electronic Health Record, MedPage Today, Anthony M. DiGiorgio and Praveen V. Mummaneni. Electronic health records (EHRs), once promised to revolutionize healthcare, are becoming a burden.
Hundreds of Thousands of Children Could Lose Coverage in Florida Alone as U.S. Approaches High Stakes Medicaid Unwinding – Center For Children and Families (georgetown.edu, Joan Alker. Congress has given the green light to states to begin checking eligibility for all Medicaid beneficiaries who have been protected from disenrollment by federal law since the Families First Covid Relief Act passed in March 2020. Look to Florida to be the worst.
Environment and Consumerism
Future Asteroid That Threatens Earth May Be Near-Indestructible, Scientists Warn, vice.com, Becky Ferreira. “Rubble-pile” asteroids are far more common than we thought, and destroying them may be effectively impossible.
What Is Predatory Lending? (2023), ConsumerAffairs, Jennifer Schurman. Here are eight common predatory lending practices to watch out for. Not all of the practices are sure signs of a predatory lender. Borrowers should be aware if they see any of them.
What Is Preforeclosure? (2023), ConsumerAffairs, Jennifer Schurman. In preforeclosure, you still own the home and can live in it for the time being. Once you miss the third payment during preforclosure, preclosure begins. You will then receive a notice of default.. During preforeclosure, you still own the home and can live in it for the time being.
Oil and Gas Threaten Africa’s Great Carbon Sink, treehugger.com, Olivia Rosane. As the planet’s largest remaining carbon sink, it is essential for efforts to prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis to the Congo Basin.
US Agencies Release Blueprint for Decarbonizing Transportation and It’s Amazing, treehugger.com, Lloyd Alter. Four U.S. agencies joined forces to release an important document that will change the way we talk about transportation: the U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization.
New study tracks Greenland’s ice thaw rates, The Washington Post, Chris Mooney. The coldest and highest parts of the Greenland ice sheet, nearly two miles above sea level in many locations, are warming rapidly and showing changes that are unprecedented in at least a millennium, scientists reported Wednesday.
New York has banned certain laundry detergents. Will other states follow? consumeraffairs.com, Mark Huffman. Banned detergents are Arm & Hammer Clean Burst, Tide Original, Arm & Hammer Sensitive Skin Free & Clear, and Gain Original + Aroma Boost. All contained more than 3 parts per million (PPM) of the chemical 1,4-dioxane. New York law limits the chemical in laundry detergents to 2 PPM.
Developers must find new water for homes planned in Arizona: Report, usatoday.com, Brandon Loomis. A newly released report from Arizona signals difficulty ahead for developers wishing to build hundreds of thousands of homes in the desert west of Phoenix.
Consumers appear to be rebelling against high prices, consumeraffairs.com, Mark Huffman. Consumers started buying fewer of the same items they purchased a year earlier. Or they found cheaper alternatives.
Law and Government
The New Yorker, The Daily, P.S. The State Department is ditching Times New Roman in favor of the sans-serif Calibri as its preferred font, according to a cable obtained by the Washington Post.
The Supreme Court Justices Do Not Seem to Be Getting Along, The Atlantic, Steven Mazie. The minority did not dissent “respectfully” in Dobbs. Instead, they (the three justices) dissented with “sorrow” for the women of America and “for this Court.”
Michigan is Banning Inmates From Reading Totally Normal Books, vice.com, Claire Woodcock. Some of the titles on the list include Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and informational books with titles like Grant Writing For Dummies, How Computers Work, How To Start A Trucking Company, and German in 32 Lessons.
Substacks
Pfizer Pays To Change The Story, (levernews.com), Andrew Perez. The pharmaceutical giant is paying news outlets to tell a different story — a fawning tale about how the company has been altruistically working to expand access to its products overseas.
DeSantis: Make Kids Dumb Again, Gov. Sanders: Duh, What He Said, Santos: GOP’s Walking Ethics Violation, Ohio: Block the Vote, David Crosby, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Ron DeSantis and George Santos, for example—have appeared previously. I would like to be done with them and never mention them or think about them again.
January 23, 2023, Letters from an American, Prof. Heather Cox Richardson
Blogs and More Links
Infidel753: Link round-up for 22 January 2023, Infidel753 blog
Brew More Beer … ! Homeless on the High Desert, g’da said
What News Was in My In-Box, December 21, 2022, Angry Bear angry bear blog
What News Was in My In-Box, December 14, 2022, Angry Bear, angry bear blog