The Angry Bear

Hi folks…I am in a next town over at a friends and am online again.   Am also thinking getting a generator due to changes in climate….:)

Dan is without power due to the Northeasterner coming up the coast. He is hoping to have power restored today since it went out on Wednesday. I am assuming he still has water. When we lose power, we lose everything besides electricity. Our well stops also and we resort to bottled water and large containers for sanitation use. While there is no heat, we do have a wood burning fireplace. Probably going to by a generator one of these days. Above 12 years...

There are no loud guns shots in the middle of the night. No screams for help or sounds of cars speeding away. No police sirens or flashing lights. It is pretty quiet when someone ODs on Opioids unless someone finds them before it is too late. As I wrote earlier; “From 2006 to 2015, pharmaceutical companies spent $880 million in lobbying state and federal legislatures and contributing to campaigns to prevent laws restricting Opioid prescriptions. Opioid...

(Dan here…Better late than never!) A thought for Sunday: the march of demographics and the 2018 midterms Below is a graph showing that the older the demographic (up until age 80), the bigger the turnout during midterm elections. The data behind this graph isn’t just from 2014, but from a series of midterm elections over time — in other words, it has been durable over time. My purpose in this post is show that, even if these percentages hold in this...

Jeffrey Sachs on Trump’s Trade Fallacies I heard on some news show an incredibly stupid statement from our President earlier today and in utter disbelief fired off this comment on some blog: Trump equates our trade deficit with us being ripped off. Let’s do this as a simple example. You walk into Best Buy and purchase a $1000 computer but do not have cash. So you put it on your credit card incurring a $1000 liability. Even though you now have the...

Eastern Economic Association Conference So, I returned late last night from Boston where I presented three papers at the 44th Eastern Economic Association conference.  Only about 70% of those preregistered made it due to weather, with airport and train station both closed on Friday, first full day of conference. One of those who did not make it was James Galbraith, scheduled to give the first Godley-Tobin plenary lecture, sponsored by the Review of...

Saudi Crown Prince Tortures Fellow Princes A new report by Hugh Miles at Middle East Monitor, Is the “Saudi Elite Cannibalizing Itself?” by Juan Cole, reports the recent purge of supposedly corrupt princes and high officials was (and continues to be) much more horrendous than previously reported, which I fear does not surprise me. Apparently Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), whom I have previously posted about here, hired mercenaries to...

(Dan here…I am always looking for new writers that might make a good fit for AB.  Jeff is in the field of behavioral economics in the private sector.  I know that the topic of climate change is a hot one here, but remember this is his first here…) by Jeff Soplop Climate Change and Environmental Frames: The Consensus-Action Disconnect American attitudes toward the environment generally – and climate change specifically – could long be described as...

Wilbur Ross on the Effective Rate of Protection When I watched this clip by Wilbur Ross – all I could think of was Mr. Ed. But what did he say? “In a can of Campbell’s Soup, there are about 2.6 pennies worth of steel. So if that goes up by 25 percent, that’s about six-tenths of 1 cent on the price on a can of Campbell’s soup,” Ross argued. “I just bought this can today at a 7-Eleven … and it priced at a $1.99. Who in the world is going to be too...