The Angry Bear

Via Alternet, Thom Hartmann writes: …This type of labor system has been the dream of conservative/corporatists, particularly since the “Reagan Revolution” kicked off a major federal war on the right of workers to organize for their own protection from corporate abuse.Unions represented almost a third of American workers when Reagan came into office (and, since union jobs set local labor standards, for every union job there was typically an...

The biggest lie coming out of the Senate today: “’One of the major problems with Obamacare was that it was written on a strict party-line basis and driven through Congress without a single Republican vote,’ McCain said. He added that Congress must now ‘hold hearings, receive input from members of both parties, and heed the recommendations of our nation’s governors.’” An African-American comes to be President and Republicans vow from day one to obstruct....

Financialized business models sticks to faith based “Market knows best” rule. …The number of MBAs graduating from America’s business schools has skyrocketed since the 1980s. But over that time, the health of American business has decreased by many metrics: corporate R&D spending, new business creation, productivity, and the level of public trust in business in general. There are many reasons for this, but one key factor is that the basic training that...

Angry Bear has over the years described the Pharma industry and its spending on Rand D and stock buybacks, among other developments in comparing US health outcomes to other countries. Via New York Times discussing this study at Ineteconomics. US Pharma’s Financialized Business Model JUL 2017 | Price gouging in the US pharmaceutical drug industry goes back more than three decades. In 1985 US Representative Henry Waxman, chair of the House Subcommittee on...

I stumbled on a recent paper in the Police Quarterly entitled “Quick on the Draw: Assessing the Relationship Between Low Self-Control and Officer-Involved Police Shootings.” The authors are Christopher M. Donner, Jon Maskaly, Alex R. Piquero, and Wesley G. Jennings from Loyola, U of Texas at Dallas, U of Texas at Dallas and U of South Florida, respectively. Quoting from the paper: While the extant literature on police use of deadly force is voluminous, it is...

PByrnes, The New Yorker, Wednesday, March 29 This appeared to fit what is going on today.

I’m not sure if this is worth posting here, but I have some thoughts on health care reform reform. The Republican arguments have become absurd in interesting ways. HHS secretary Price said something which makes no sense: “the Senate health care bill strengthens and secures Medicaid for the neediest in our society,” putting the program, which serves more than 70 million low-income people, on “a path to long-term sustainability.” Republicans regularly describe...

Trump: the endgame There was some economic news last week which is important for the long term, and I’ll try to post about it later today or tomorrow, but in the meantime … I’m as interested in the latest Trump-Russia tidbit as the next person, but really, don’t we all already know the endgame? Remember during the campaign, no matter what devastating gaffes Trump made, he always rebounded into the low 40%’s? Well, about the same thing has been true for the...

At least 40 Republican Senators and possibly the critical 50 have decided to stand up to the lobbyists, the interest groups and big business. They are willing to vote for the Cruz amended BCRA which would not just repeal Obamacare, but also destroy US individual market health insurance. If they do so, they stand up to many of the most powerful lobbies including the AMA and the AARP (but not the NRA or AIPAC). Most importantly, they reject the very firm...