[unable to retrieve full-text content]In 1998, I traveled to Moscow for the first time to teach in a summer course at the Russian Academy of Sciences. The week before, we were on vacation in Colorado and I heard on the radio “Today, the ruble lost 100% of its value.” That meant that the ruble was worthless, which seemed unlikely. […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]I’ve read where Musk and Ramaswami are proposing a 75% cut in the federal workforce. That’s absurd. • National security-related agencies account for roughly 70% of the civilian workforce. The largest employers were the Department of Veterans Affairs, with 487,000 workers, followed by the armed services, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Justice Department. […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Mexico buys about $300 billion worth of goods from us every year, mostly machinery, oil, autos, food and office equipment. If Trump imposes a 25% tariff on Mexican imports, you can be sure that Mexico will retaliate, at the expense of American jobs. Meanwhile, Mexico will certainly be looking to source these goods from China […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Back when Trump rebranded NAFTA as “USMCE,” here’s what he said about it: “We have negotiated this new agreement based on the principle of fairness and reciprocity…. This is a terrific deal for all of us….This new deal will be the most modern, up-to-date, and balanced trade agreement in the history of our country…. With […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]If it bleeds, it leads. CNN has a piece about Ramon Rivera, who randomly stabbed three people in NYC. He was mentally ill, in and out of Rikers and mental health facilities. He’s like a drunk driver who has a history of alcoholism. “New York City Mayor Eric Adams described Rivera as a homeless man […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Trump has promised to deport >10 million undocumented people living in the US. He justifies this by saying they are dangerous criminals. In fact, immigrants commit crimes at a *lower* rate than US citizens. He has announced his intention to deploy US troops in US streets to capture and detain people who are claimed to […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]The United States emerged in the 20th century after two world wars as the world’s sole superpower. It further cemented its political and economic hegemony with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But like all empires throughout history, the American empire has a finite half-life, and its final decline is in full view. For some […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Modern Argentina has had a problematic and sometimes sordid history. From the dirty war of the 1970s to hyperinflation, the South American nation has been ill-served by most of its leaders. Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina in October 2023 after campaigning to overturn the status quo and transform the economy and politics of […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]One of the phenomena that have led to increased income inequality and the hollowing out of the middle class in America is the decline of unions. Recently, it appears that some workers are trying to claw back some of that lost economic ground. Now I don’t count PCPs as middle class or working class. Yes, […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]RFK Jr and the food-as-medicine trope Anti-vaxxer and brain-worm afflicted RFK Jr has announced, among his priorities, to use federal money to get people to eat better. From The Palm Beach Post: “The former independent presidential candidate is a big fan of Trump but not so much about the president-elect’s fast-food diet. “During an interview […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Years ago, we had an MD/PhD student in our program who had Eilers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that causes joint laxity and frequent painful joint dislocations. After over a decade of being misdiagnosed, her correct diagnosis was made by a physical therapist, not a physician. I noted in a previous post that I’ve been […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]America is the only industrialized nation where you can go bankrupt because of medical care. The ACA helped mitigate that risk for tens of millions, but the Trump Administration is promising to abolish the ACA. For those with some form of health insurance (private insurance, the ACA, Medicare), there’s still the challenge of (a) finding […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Trump and his minions may not believe in global warming, but people whose livelihoods depend on understanding climate change—bankers, insurance companies and the military—know it’s real. So do non-humans whose livelihoods are compromised by climate change: “Native fish populations will likely continue their decline off of Massachusetts’ coast, while species from further south will move […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]No, the 1% aren’t the job creators—that’s the middle class and working class. Tax cuts for the 1%, of course, don’t create jobs, they just create greater wealth disparity: “The authors set out to examine all instances of major tax reductions on the rich in 18 OECD countries between 1965 and 2015 and identify the […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]We had rooftop solar on our house for eight years before we moved. Half the price was paid by Ameren, the electric utility, and we got a 30% tax rebate on the balance. Even with that steep discount, we never got back our put, even in nominal dollars. Solar panels are much cheaper now, and […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Trump administration is threatening to deport >10 million people. These are people who, regardless of their immigration status, are contributing to the economy and jobs by purchasing goods and service (“job creators”) and contributing to social programs like Social Security and Medicare. Indeed, if they are undocumented, they will never see benefits to the […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]I’ve seen some people post “Happy Veteran’s Day.” I’m not a veteran. Technically, my dad was, although he was a naval officer who did his service in the Canal Zone, nowhere close to combat. I never saw him happy on Veteran’s Day. I was never in the military, although I did carry a draft card […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Trump says global warming is a scam and a hoax. He promises to cut federal funding for green programs and to ramp up fracking and drilling. He can certainly do the former, but business controls drilling and fracking, and the price of oil is dictated by international supply and demand, not the whims of the […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Posted on behalf of the author, RC Weakley: At this point hysteresis is all that is holding the US dollar as the global reserve currency. That has been the case since Nixon. What we have done since then has only dug us into a deeper hole when events finally happen that will throw the dirt […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]In 2020, I enrolled in the Moderna clinical trial of their mRNA vaccine. I got the first jab in August 2020, and it turns out I was in the vaccine arm of the trial, not the placebo arm. I’ve now had seven vaccinations, as the vaccine has been updated. I contracted COVID once. Of course, […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]My parents retired to rural upstate NY, where they lived happily for 20 years. But naturally, as they aged, their health declined. At one point, my mom had a pulmonary embolism, and landed in a community hospital in Bennington VT, about 30 miles away. She got the care she needed, but when she was later […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]I have two dental implants, the first of which was done nearly ten years ago. They were both done after a tooth broke and the dentist told me he couldn’t save the tooth. I could have just left the hole, but elected to fill it with an implant, which was done in each case by […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Republicans have long objected to the ACA, and Trump tried several times to have it overturned; he’s claimed he’ll replace it with something better, but in eight years, he’s never come up with even a rudiment of a proposal. And here’s Speaker Johnson at a campaign stop yesterday: “No Obamacare?” an attendee asked Johnson, referring […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]My wife and I are recently retired. We moved to New England to be close to our grandson and his parents. We’re living independently in a three-bedroom detached house. My parents were able to live independently into their early 80s, when my dad began to dement. My mom was much smaller than him, and wasn’t […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Here at Angry Bear, we’re all about intelligent discourse and diverse viewpoints, as long as the posts are honest and backed by facts and evidence. We will delete comments that support a flat earth, a geocentric solar system or creationism, as well as their political equivalents. We don’t feed trolls here at AB, regardless of […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Kevin Drum over at jabberwocking.com watched the Trump spectacle over at Madison Square Garden so we didn’t have to. He zeros in on Elon Musk: “Elon used to be smart enough to do simple addition, but he thinks we can cut “at least” $2 trillion from federal spending—which amounted to $6.1 trillion last year, not […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]The plutocrats on the right want to dismantle the administrative state, so they say. Of course, their wealth derives directly from the fiction of private property and an administrative state is required to enforce that fiction. Their wealth is monetized in currency, which is another fiction that the administrative state holds a monopoly on. The […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Trump promises to round up the homeless and put them in government internment camps. Only if they seek treatment and counseling, they might then qualify to be moved to housing. Harris takes a “housing first” approach. Get a roof over their heads and some housing stability, then offer the treatments and counseling that can move […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]You might think universities would be immune to the financial pressures of the non-academic marketplace. You would be wrong. Brandeis University is struggling financially, and recently fired their resident string quartet, the Lydian String Quartet* after 40 years, to save $275,000. Other universities that, unlike Brandeis, have medical schools, are also struggling with their budgets. […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content]Trump is promising lots of tariffs if he’s elected. Make no mistake: American consumers pay tariffs, not the exporting country. US consumers will be hit by (a) increased cost of imported goods, and (b) increased cost of domestic goods, as domestic producers raise prices to match imports. Econ 101. Trump is promising to lift taxes […]
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