The Angry Bear

Back in 1919, in the Schenck v. United States decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes reasoned that Schenck’s right to speech was not protected under the First Amendment because: The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. […] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present...

What I am writing about today is the up-and-coming changes to the PPACA resulting from the signing of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 by President Joe Biden. This is not Medicare-for-All or Single Payor; however, it is a big leap forward in making healthcare affordable for the next two years. Improved affordability will come with cost analysis and the impact on pricing and reduced administrative costs. I have touched upon those costs in early...

Coronavirus dashboard for March 8: Update on the effect of vaccinations My first post on the coronavirus was almost exactly one year ago, on March 10, 2020, “This is what exponential growth looks like,” warning that exponential spread was exactly what had started to happen in the US. We are now finally averaging the administration of over 2 million doses of vaccine per day, and according to the CDC almost 60 million people constituting nearly 20%...

Initial jobless claims make further progress towards November lows Last week I “pre-debunked” the idea that a lack of reporting in Texas skewed the big decline in claims, concluding that “being very generous, the ‘real’ seasonally adjusted number of initial claims at worst probably would have been only about 30,000 higher – I.e., 760,000 – but for Texas issues.”  That observation was validated this week, as last week’s 730,000 number was only...

Tags: open thread

Commenter RJS, MarketWatch 666 on the Goods and Services Trade Deficit. International Trade in Goods and Services, March 5, 2021 Our trade deficit rose 1.9% in January, as both the value of our exports and our imports increased, but the value of our imports increased by more…the Commerce Dept report on our international trade in goods and services for January indicated that our seasonally adjusted goods and services trade deficit rose by a...

Professor Heather Cox Richardson at Boston College details Bloody Sunday in her “Letters from An American,” how it relates to the SCOTUS decision in 2013, and the signing of an Executive Order by President Joe Biden “to promote voting access and allow all eligible Americans to participate in our democracy.” Some of us were around in 1963 and would read the events of the day in the newspapers which were delivered to our door. At 14, I can not say...

Disposable People Disposable people are indispensable. Who else would fight the wars? Who would preach? Who would short derivatives? Who would go to court and argue both sides? Who would legislate? Who would sell red hots at the old ball game? For too long disposable people have been misrepresented as destitute, homeless, unemployed, or at best precariously employed. True, the destitute, the homeless, the unemployed and the precarious are...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for March 2 – 6 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Two important data considerations this week: (1) for the first time, some YoY comparisons – e.g., restaurant reservations – are compared with data after the onset of the pandemic. The distortions will intensify next week and last at least through the end of April; and (2) long-term interest rates, in particular for...