The Angry Bear

This is what I believe Eric Kramer is asking for.  If we are ever going to fix the justice system and ultimately this nation, what Senator Whitehouse presented today needs to be internalized by everyone. Yes, ACA, abortion, gay marriage.  They are major issue, I have a stake in 2 of them.  But – a big ass BUT – the real game is the machine that has been operating for a very long time and honed to a run as smooth as a screaming F1 engine.  And it’s...

There is a big push by trump and Republicans to bring a Covid to market quickly. Remember the Thalidomide Disaster, The Morning Call, May 12, 2020 Thalidomide In the rush to find a vaccine or treatment for the coronavirus, let’s not forget the bitter lesson learned in the 1950s and ’60s when thalidomide was prescribed to pregnant women for morning sickness. Thalidomide was approved for European use in 1957 although it was never tested on pregnant women....

Democrats so far have focused on the risk that Amy Coney Barrett poses to the Affordable Care Act.  This is completely understandable as electioneering.  The ACA was one of their best issues in 2018, and it will be again this year.  But . . . By focusing narrowly on the ACA, the Democrats are missing an opportunity to educate the public more broadly on the role of the Court and the danger posed by a highly conservative and partisan set of Justices.  The...

In The Face Of Total Turbulence, Go Totally Conventional For The Nobel Prize  I have noted in various places that I could not make a forecast this year on the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel because of all the turbulence on so many fronts going on.  So it occurred to me that the committee might avoid political controversy by going technical, although I thought it more likely they would give it for something in...

This chart can be found here at EPI: Figure 1

College educational attainment by age demographic There is no economic data today due to the Columbus Day observance. So let me drop this graph of a metric I have been trying to find, of college educational attainment by age demographic, that I finally came across a couple of days ago: It is commonplace that among Whites at least, support for Democrats is highly correlated by a college education. What is unclear is whether that is actually a function...

Kip Sullivan and I have had a running dialogue over the last year or so. Kip has been writing for such sites as The Health Care Blog, other blogs and newspaper. I find his knowledge insightful as we discuss what we know and where we are going with healthcare. Today Kip is working on implementing “Health Care For All – Minnesota” and is also developing a 3-year research and public education campaign. If you have questions this is the person to ask them....

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 5 – 9 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Because the pandemic so quickly and completely put the economy in a coma back in April, and the economy remains at severely depressed levels by most metrics compared with a year ago, in June I started to compared current levels with the worst pandemic readings.  This week I went further, and calculated the best readings since the...

Coronavirus dashboard for October 9: everybody has to touch the hot stove at least once Total confirmed US infections: 7,605,218* Average infections last 7 days: 46,869 Total US deaths: 212,762 *Actual number is probably 5 to 7 million higher, or about 4% of the total US population Source: COVID Tracking Project In the last 4 weeks, the average number of new infections has risen again. Here is the breakdown by regions: Here is the same for deaths:...