The Angry Bear

Is The Possible V-Shaped Recovery Flattening As The Second Quarter Comes To An End? Probably,  although it is unclear whether or not we are having a V-shaped recovery (see most recent post here). However, whatever it is, it looks like the revived spread of the coronavirus is probably slowing it somewhat.  New cases are up by 15% nationally from a low point several weeks ago, and there are reports of businesses of various sorts of closing, if not whole...

George Floyd and the Costs of Racial Capitalism, LAWCHA, Ken Estey, June 10, 2020 Some History A little bit about LAWCHA. The “Labor and Working Class History Association” is an organization of scholars, teachers, students, labor educators, and activists who seek to promote public and scholarly awareness of labor and working-class history through research, writing, and organizing. It grew out of the conversations among labor historians over the course of...

From The Guardian: In 2010, the UN declared clean water to be a human right. Yet a decade later, millions of Americans lack basic indoor plumbing, more than 100 million are exposed to toxic chemicals in their drinking water, and water bills have risen by an average of 80% across 12 US cities, in a cascading crisis of water affordability. The Guardian is tackling the subject of the US water crisis with a landmark series, in partnership with Consumer...

Coronavirus dashboard for June 22: a pandemic newly focused on the young appears to be changing the dynamics Confirmed US coronavirus infections: 2,280,969 Confirmed US coronavirus deaths: 119,977 The 7 day average of new infections in the US has risen 30% from its low of 20,357 on June 9 to 26,546 yesterday: On a per capita basis, US infections are now roughly 4x those in Europe: Curiously, the 7 day average of deaths has continued to decline, to 605...

On Choosing a Belief System by Ken Melvin Belief Systems, these prisms through which we view the world, have been around from our earliest days. Not so long ago, the Ancient Greeks separated the concept of what we might call belief into two concepts: pistis and doxa with pistis referring to trust and confidence (notably akin the regard accorded science) and doxa referring to opinion and acceptance (more akin the regard accorded cultural norms). In quest...

In a recent post, the blogger/economist Donald Boudreaux expressed deep fear of the people protesting for police reform and of progressive politics generally.  Below is an open letter responding to his post.  It is long (mostly below the fold) but it highlights some of the key issues separating libertarians and classical liberals from progressives and liberal egalitarians.  I hope you’ll take the time to click through!  Comments welcome as always....

The 2020 Presidential election as forecast by State polling As we all know, in the US Presidential election national polls are of limited use, as the election is actually decided on a State by State basis. I’ve seen lots of projections of the Electoral College vote based on national polls, but what if we go just by State polls, and in particular State polls that have been reported in the last 30 days? That, dear reader, is what the following map looks...

Coronavirus dashboard for June 19: infections and hospitalizations have increased; it may be too late for Arizona Let’s start with the basics: total US coronavirus infections are 2,191,371. Total US deaths from coronavirus are 118,436. Those are official numbers; the real numbers are obviously higher. The number of daily new infections averaged over a week has started to rise decisively. After a low of 20,357 on June 9, as of the 18th it has risen to...

Springsteen: “I had another show prepared for broadcast this week on this strange and eventful summer, but with 100,000+ Americans dying over the last few months and the empty, shamed response from our leaders, I’ve been simply pissed off.  Those lives deserved better than just being inconvenient statistics for our President’s re-election efforts. It’s a national disgrace. If you haven’t noticed, President Trump—or anyone in the White House, really—hasn’t...