The Angry Bear

Epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding . . . “No other ways to spin this.” Common Dreams, “Warnings of Possible Cover-Up in Progress” I was hoping I could get the clip of Doctor Wen discussing what the Trump administration has done in its end run around the CDC. I couldn’t C&P the embed code as it is in a lock down and I do not have the wave length to create one for it. You can view the news clip here “Trump Orders Hospitals to give him the data.”...

The 2020 Presidential election nowcasts and forecast: growing evidence for a likely Biden blowout For the past three weeks I have posted a projection of the Electoral College vote based solely on State rather than national polls (since after all that is how the College operates) that have been reported in the last 30 days. Here’s how it works: – States where the race is closer than 3% are shown as toss-ups. – States where the range is between 3% to 5%...

Me Worthies by Ken Melvin If 40% of Americans think like Trump thinks, is America worth saving? At his rallies, we see C-SPAN shots of mostly overweight middle-aged and somewhat older whites; so we certainly can’t blame his ascendancy on recent immigrants. As Walt’s Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Pretty good bet that Trump is both a narcissist and a sociopath. And his supporters, they too? No doubt some of his supporters care more about...

to coronavirus, like the famous pioneers who “had to turn to cannibalism” Rush Limbaugh, Media Matters for America, July 14, 2020 Something to sleep on tonight by our faithful idiot Rush. “In the Spanish flu — ’17, ’18, ’19, 1917, ’18 — much death. Do you know that there was not one mention of it by the president of the United States at the time, Woodrow Wilson? Never talked about it, there was no national policy to deal with it. There was no shutdown,...

Capitalism and Class by Ken Melvin Whence this attitude that the working class is expendable and that the middle and upper classes are not? Donald J. Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Betsy DeVos, being the brave, patriotic souls that they are, demand, for the sake of the nation, that the working class step-up and take the risk of going back to work and sending their working-class kids to school an do so without sufficient protective measures in force and with...

(Dan here…via Diane Ravitch’s blog…) Philly-Area Charters Collect $30 Million+ in PPP Funding by dianeravitch Charters in the Philadelphia area received more than $30 million in Paycheck Protection Program funds, while public schools in Philadelphia continue to be systematically underfunded. The big winner in the PPP sweepstakes is the for-profit Chester Community Charter School, owned by a major Republican donor and billionaire. One of the largest...

by Joseph Joyce Economists and Inequality Binyamin Applebaum of the New York Times has written a book, The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets and the Fracture of Society, in which he claims that economists are responsible for the increase in income inequality in the U.S. I thought this charge was off the mark and wrote a reply. My piece, “Are Economists Responsible for Income Inequality?“, has been published in the June issue of Society. Here...

Initial and continuing claims, JOLTS show labor market “less awful” improvement continues – for now Weekly initial and continuing jobless claims have been giving the most up-to-date snapshot of the continuing economic impacts of the coronavirus on employment. This week continues the trend of slight improvement (or, more truly, slightly less awful). Below are initial jobless claims both seasonally adjusted (blue) and non- seasonally adjusted (red). The...

Favoring Hi-Tech Tax Cheats Over Consumers of French Wine Hoping to buy a nice bottle of French wine? Doug Palmer of Poltico has some bad news for you: The Trump administration announced Friday a 25 percent tariff on $1.3 billion worth of French handbags, cosmetics and soaps in retaliation for a digital services tax on U.S. internet giants, but said it would suspend imposing them for up to six months. The United States believes the way the French tax is...