By Tom Walker

Econospeak

Book proposal: Marx’s Fetters and the Realm of Freedom: a remedial reading — part 2.1

Karl Marx’s preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy contains the best-known description of his theory of history. At some point contradiction between the relations of production and the forces of production become fetters on the latter, ushering in a period of social revolution. The traditional interpretation is that the social revolution will unleash technological advances that enable industrial production to expand by “leaps and bounds,” even as free time for workers also increases. Marx’s description, however, specifically referred to a general conclusion he had reached in the 1840s that “became the guiding

I lived in Michigan for twenty-something years in the district Mike was our House Representative (8th Congressional District). Mike was mediocre at best and followed the Republican line. Republicans controlled the House and the Senate and the Governorship the majority of the time. Michigan lost approximately 800,000 jobs during that time as well as industry.

Since Mike is running for Senator, I will be portraying his past as a Congressional Representative as many, more than likely forgot what he did and did not do. He is running against Elissa Slotkin who is more up to date and someone I supported when she first ran.

March 29, 2014: Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers is not seeking reelection to Congress, ending a 14-year career in Washington. Rogers,

Back to my points (AB), we have survived a pandemic, provided for the welfare of the citizenry, and the nation is on its way to better times. The only sticking point being the 2017 tax cut which is leaving the nation with another reoccurring deficit.

How quick the influential 1-percenters were to move away from Biden as this was on his list of things to fix. Will a President Kamala make it a priority too?

~~~~~~~~

Back in the 1990s, when Republicans and even many Democrats were looking to cut and/or privatize Social Security. The standard wisdom being to be taken seriously, you acknowledge Social Security was facing a crisis. Even many progressives who supported the program repeated that line.

Social Security, of course, was not in a

After going through a generation (baby-boomers) of supporting equal rights for “all” which includes women (later in the effort), Corporate America (in this case John Deere) is reversing its course. The stance is a “whatever will be, will be” and we will not make an effort to level the playing field.

I was working on a cable scaffold about 20 stories up. A 20th floor window opened up and another worker with his canvas bag of tools stepped on the scaffold. About that time, Marty (foreman) let loose with a lengthy list of explicatives at the new worker including “nigger.” This was 1970 and equal rights was still a dream and racial tension was high.

If they can not work as an equal in capabilities, how can you hold them responsible. Marty left the

I had presented Part I and Part II a while back. Part III was difficult to present in a piece-meal way so for now I have set it aside. What is interesting about Part IV is I can beak it apart into segments, still maintain the flow of informatio, and present it in a logical manner. Bear with me. By the time we get to the end, I believe you will be able to piece this together too. In Part IV . . .

What Antonio is doing in Part IV is laying the foundation for the question asked: Are Drug Companies Alone Responsible for the Prices We Pay for Medicines? He intends to break it down. I intend to break it down further for Angry Bear.

Money from Sick People Part IV: Paying a Premium for Drug Pricing Irregularity, 46brooklyn Research, Antonio Ciaccia

Morning . . .

One other factor I believe you may have missed (too many factors). The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did not pay for itself over the last 10 years. Just a small matter of it passing using Reconciliation which insists it pay for itself (being redundant here).

The repeal of it impacts those in the upper 10% (or more) of the taxpayers and more so the 1 percenter who make up a million (taxpayers) or slightly more taxpayers having income far greater than the lowest ten percenter. Lest we forget, corporations, the management, and their stockholders have much to lose if the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is repealed.

It is not just high rollers such as Jamie getting nervous. It is Corporations and all the stockholders domestic and abroad who

We are not going to get much time to know VP Kamela Harris. I took the liberty of copying word for word what The Copper Courier (independent news) had to offer about her background just today. It covers quite a bit. Hopefully, this will give you some background to base any feelings negative or positive about her.

Of course, I knew more about Joe Biden. He was relentless on not offering any type of relief for student loans as a Senator. Many of you may know, I was backing Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice. I cornered Stabenow while at a garden party in Michigan as I was a donner to her campaign. Students there were clapping. At Show Down in Chicago, I managed to get a question/statement in with Durbin. Mostly about when are the Dems going to

Topic, we have not touched upon in a while at Angry Bear. The stats are there to support more rigid laws suppressing the illegal use of firearms and tighter controls on possession. I am sure there will be the naysayers. Ok, fine. Be polite in expressing an opinion. Don’t care about what Clarence thinks as he is no expert as well as the three-month Army wonder Samuel. My background?

At one time I could part your hair at 500 yards with a stock out-of-the armory M14. Marine Corps is pretty good at training except I was already good. Still shoot once and a while. The problem as I see it, too many people have access to too many weapons they should not have access too. An access to dumb unneeded weapons as well.

The doctors taking care of the wounded

We live in a mixed community. I think we are the oldest couple in the area. We did not want to go to an older adult-type of setting. This community is bad enough with its HOA.

On one side we have a young couple with a baby. They come to our house with their baby to enjoy dinner. Relaxing in our family room allows the baby to move around and her coming to me to sit in my lap . . . “up, up in her limited English.” So up she comes to my lap. She does such because her real grandfather held her for periods at a time. So she sees myself as similar.

On the other side are two young women living together in their home. They laugh when they see me in my PJs with my messed up hair, taking the garbage out to the front to be picked up later in the

Tom has it correct. I am not so sure I would want to be associated with the jackasses engaging in ageism. I am not far behind Biden in age.

The initial debate was a shocker. A shocker where one person can speak lie after lie in front of millions of people and stand there looking justified in doing so. And those who support him and such behavior are no better.

Tom Sullivan at HuLLaBaLoo, July 17, 2024

They’re both old. The Republican is a lying criminal.

Joe Biden is an aging but accomplished public servant who occasionally loses his train of thought. Donald Trump is a self-obsessed, wannabe dictator, a convicted criminal three years younger, a pathological liar who falls asleep during his own trial and nominating convention. When Biden

Tonight: Put on your seatbelts, watch your wallets, bring your parachute, and join us (substack.com)

Just click on the link above to have access. And the timing?Friends,

In just a few hours, Donald Trump — convicted felon, twice-impeached former president, denier of the results of the 2020 election, instigator of an attempted coup — will take the stage at the Republican National Convention and give his nomination acceptance speech.

Will Trump actually try to unite the country like he says he will? Will he surprise the world by calling for a ban on assault weapons? Or will he resort to the same old lies, Democrat bashing, and dangerous rhetoric? I’d put my money on the latter.

It’s important to watch, but it’s going to be hard to do so. No

By Alyssa Lukpat

WSJ

AB: Wondering what NBC News is afraid of with Morning Joe.

The hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” said they were disappointed NBC News pulled the show off the air on Monday in the wake of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

Joe Scarborough, one of the hosts, said NBC told them on Sunday night it wanted to air one breaking news feed on all its channels, so their show wouldn’t broadcast Monday. He said NBC diverted from its plan for one live news feed covering the Saturday shooting and instead aired regular programming. Shows hosted by Ari Melber and Nicolle Wallace aired later Monday in their usual time slots.  

Scarborough said Tuesday . . .

“We were very surprised. We were very disappointed.” He said that if

General Motors Receives $500M Federal Grant to Electrify Lansing Grand River Plant

by R.J. King

DBusiness Magazine

AB: Plant conversions from building gasoline and diesel driven vehicles to EVs. A timely move even if the newer models will require need modifications in later years.

General Motors Co. today announced it has received a $500 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to assist in preparing its Lansing Grand River plant for electrification.

For more than 20 years, GM Lansing Grand River has built luxury and performance vehicles like the Cadillac V-Series Blackwings. GM also is investing in the plant conversion.

The grant comes from a federal Domestic Manufacturing Conversion Grant program. The cost-shared grants

By Jasper Craven

Task & Purpose

In mid-April, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, and Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, sent a letter to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough demanding to know why the agency was wounding itself. 

Specifically, they worried about a series of seemingly contradictory eligibility and staffing policies. In March, the VA handed down a directive that expanded healthcare eligibility to millions of veterans who were exposed to toxins and other hazards while serving in the military. And yet not long after, the department paused hiring for most positions, with plans to cut as many as 10,000 full-time staff in 2025 and then another 10,000 in 2026. 

“They’re cutting front-line people who see

One has to wonder whether the misspelling is purposely done to attract attention or is a true misspelling of dementia. If you can not spell it correctly, how can you accuse a successful president who sidestepped a pandemic, kept a nation going during the pandemic, and has many other accomplishments over the past years.

Pennsylvania Billboard Claims Joe Biden Has Dementia, Spells It Wildly Wrong, – Newsweek

This is getting pretty wild as the naysayers are resorting to various attacks and have problems in making their points. And what did Trump do for the nation? Mainly he left a $2+ trillion deficit for the nation.

Tags: billboard misspelling

What got me going to write this was reading a short blurb on The Lever about the economy. The transcript was provided and I read part of it. The content is all about supply chain which I was a part of for 40-something years. I find The Lever script (link below) interesting as it parallels my experience. It may be boring to you.

Some background

Nineteen seventy-four was a pretty good year for my wife and I. Finished college after three years with a minor in math and majoring in business. My sights were set on getting a degree in engineering until the bottom dropped out of the discipline. It did change after a few years. I had already changed course due to getting some advice from a VP of patents and trademarks. My wife worked for him and the

In Pictures: The 4th of July Through the Years, by Luke Ryan, 4 July 2022, SOFREP

Clicking on the SOFREP link will take you to the site where you can get some history and more pictures depicting the 4th of July over the years. As an XMarine Sergeant I am hoping I am allowed to use this picture.

Have a safe 4th of July holiday Angry Bears. I will see you on Thursday.

One of my favs for legal stuff.

Supreme Court rulings on guns, abortion, Constitution: How originalism ate the law. (slate.com)

by Dahlia Lithwick

SLATE

America is being led astray by a small handful of folks who are drunk-driving on originalism—and not in a funny Marx Brothers, spin-around-in-circles-and-all-fall-down sort of way. No, it’s in a children-murdered-in-their-classrooms, women-hemorrhaging-in-parking-lots, environmental-and-health-regulations-destroyed kind of way. And that’s because the whole nation is currently lashed to a small, stupid, perpetually changing theory of legal interpretation variously known as “originalism,” or “textualism,” or “original public meaning,” or “history and tradition.” A theory that is—unless you

I put this in line for posting maybe today (Monday), asked Joel to look at it and offer an opinion on it, and was wondering if it had any consequence. By that I mean, the term fascism, fascist, etc. is becoming a popular term in people’s commentary, and is not a scary label when applied anymore.

The not so supreme court decided today, our last president is immune from any prosecution for his criminal activities. For all intents and purposes, he walks away from all responsibility of things he has instigated. This is the man, the person who instigated an attack on the capitol, to replace Joe Biden? Yeah, right . . .

He used to edit political stories at the Chicago Tribune. Now he says the press is failing our democracy, PressThink

“You don’t

Elena Kagan Is Horrified by What the Supreme Court Just Did. You Should Be Too.

by Mark Stern

SLATE Jurisprudence

This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court this June. Alongside Amicus, we kicked things off this year by explaining How Originalism Ate the Law.

The Supreme Court fundamentally altered the way that our federal government functions on Friday, transferring an almost unimaginable amount of power from the executive branch to the federal judiciary. By a 6–3 vote, the conservative supermajority overruled Chevron v. NRDC, wiping out four decades of precedent that required unelected judges to defer to the expert judgment of federal agencies.

The ruling is extraordinary in

What Chief Justice Roberts is saying is the justices know more than the scientists and engineers know. This was done in a decision which the agency experts immediately criticized. The issue being potentially undermining decisions by scientists and the very same agency experts.

The 6-3 and 6-2 decisions brought by fishing operators in New Jersey and Rhode Island challenged a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rule. The court’s ruling overturned the principle known as Chevron deference.

Laughable, the court’s six conservatives reasoned courts “routinely confront statutory ambiguities” that have nothing to do with the authority of regulatory agencies. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.

“Of course, when faced

As usual and as expected (for me anyway), I pulled up Abdul – Jabbar to get his perspective on the first presidential debate between cough-cough x-president trump . . . a proven liar and President Joe Biden. I read the other blog sites and substacks that want me to pay to read them plus an ability to comment.

They are all clanging a 4-alarm fire. And why would I pay to comment there when I can do so at Angry Bear? Just some commentary between us all including the unsupported remarks.

Not all of the pundits, but many are suggesting Biden is done, done after producing the best economy over 4 years given two years of a pandemic. Kareem suggests we vote based upon their records and what they have done over 4 years and not decide based upon 60 or

I have been writing on the Opioid epidemic for years. I was asked to write on it by some organizations. SCOTUS tossing the settlement may be due to the settlement releasing the Sacklers from any liability in promotion and the sale of Oxycontin, etc.

Supreme Court tosses opioid settlement worth billions for states, victims, USA TODAY and also at MSN.

Quick Note: For the settlement worth $billions, there was also a release of liability for the Sacklers.

“Purdue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2019 to address its debts, nearly all of which stemmed from thousands of lawsuits alleging that OxyContin sparked an opioid epidemic that has caused more than half a million U.S. overdose deaths over two decades.”

A pill in a bottle does not cause

I am the recipient of Robert Reich’s commentaries which I have posted here on occasion. Mostly, this is to introduce other information which may differ than mine, to seek comments from people who read it, and to seek on topic comments here. It may seem like we are grouchy at times. Much of which is due to when some wander off topic or take other liberties which we may frown upon. The latest . . .

The taxing difference

by Robert Reich

Robert’s substack

Trump’s and Biden’s tax policies need more coverage because they’re opposites. Biden’s is progressive. Trump’s is regressive.

One of my goals in sending you this daily letter is to equip you with arguments and facts you need. This is especially true leading up to the 2024 presidential

An abbreviated portion of Preston Mui’s “Where High Rates are Restricting Investment,” Employ America. This portion of his economic commentary discusses housing and in particular Multifamily.

Preston Mui: The Federal Reserve has held rates at the current level for nearly a year. The majority of the committee appears confident that monetary policy is currently restrictive. From the perspective of their confidence, the question for monetary policy is how long rates will need to sit at this level of restrictiveness.

Despite the Fed holding rates at the highest level in over twenty years, the US economy remains strong: overall growth is robust and consumption is strong. The unemployment rate remains near historic lows. Neel Kashkari  makes the

This popped up. What not to do on a sunny day in the Nevada desert.

The F-89 Fighter Fired ‘Mini’ Nuclear Bomb Rockets to Make Russia Freak, msn.com

A new design F-89J flying overhead was carrying a different and altogether deadlier payload. An approximate three-meter-long rocket with a 1.5 kiloton nuclear W25 nuclear warhead in its tip.  The rocket was designated MB-1 Genie, later renamed the AIR-2A, and popularly nicknamed the “Ding Dong.”

After a count-down, Captain Alfred Barbee triggered the rocket’s solid-fuel motor. The Genie shot forth, propelled to over three times the speed of sound during its two-second burn. Once fired Captain Alfred Barbee turned his F89 and hightailed it out of the area.

On the Ground below the detonation.

The International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans found employers are projecting a 7 percent hike for health care costs in 2024. Aon projected the average costs for U.S. employers paying for their employees’ health care could increase 8.5 percent to more than $15,000 per employee in 2024.

Voters remember the pain, not the gain

by Merrill Goozner

GoozNews

Here’s another problem for President Biden’s reelection team. In in policy arena that should be a strength for an incumbent who has lowered the uninsured rate to the lowest ever. When asked about health care issues voters are most concerned about, they choose rising health care costs, specifically, the rising sums they must pay out-of-pocket despite being insured.

The latest

AB: I am not sure how Republicans will sugar coat Trump’s economic plans for 2025.

June 23, 2024

Prof. Heather Cox Richardson

Letters from an American

On Thursday, Moody’s Analytics, which evaluates risk, performance, and financial modeling, compared the economic promises of President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Authors Mark Zandi, Brendan LaCerda, and Justin Begley concluded that while a second Biden presidency would see cooling inflation and continued economic growth of 2.1%, a Trump presidency would be an economic disaster.

Trump has promised to slash taxes on the wealthy, increase tariffs across the board, and deport at least 11 million immigrant workers. According to the analysts, these policies

Should be back Sunday Night. He was pretty ill and I needed to be there to help him along.

Bill

Finally, someone of stature is taking a look at private equity acquiring hospital chains, milking their funds, and leaving a shell of what the original hospital was earlier. I am hoping Elizabeth Warren can force the issues with these take overs private equity takeovers. In the end, many communities depending on these hospitals are left without adequate healthcare services. Thy are forced to travel miles to get emergency and other care. I added 4 to 5 links to this commentary to backup my comments and also Eileen Appelbaum’s commentary

Warren’s New Bill Makes Private Equity’s Death Grip on Hospitals a Crime.

by Eileen Appelbaum

Center for Economic and Policy Research,

Private equity’s entrance into health care since 2000 has been