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EconoSpeak

The Econospeak blog, which succeeded MaxSpeak (co-founded by Barkley Rosser, a Professor of Economics at James Madison University and Max Sawicky, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute) is a multi-author blog . Self-described as “annals of the economically incorrect”, this frequently updated blog analyzes daily news from an economic perspective, but requires a strong economics background.

When did Israel Become “America’s Best Ally”?

 In the recent US Vice Presidential debate, the current US VP, Mike Pence dropped a throaway line that until nobody has noticed until now. He labeled Israel as America's "best ally," or a term meaning the same thing.I think that from at least 1917 the "best ally" of the US was either Canada or UK. Under Trump both of those alliances were downgraded, although they were loyal to us for all that time.So now we have the supposedly new "best ally" (might be slightly different wording, but it...

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Voting in a Time of Covid: A Question about Judicial “Originalism”

The originalist theory of legal interpretation holds that judges, in reviewing the implementation of a statute, should be guided by the “plain meaning” of its language at the time it was adopted.  This is in opposition to the notion of a “living law”, whose interpretation should evolve as the conditions it addresses evolves.  For instance, originalists are appalled by Supreme Court decisions like Roe v Wade, since nowhere does the Constitution establish a right to bodily privacy, nor could...

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“Papa Haydn” or “Papa Bach”

 So a cultural diversion from all the current shouting.  Was it "Papa Haydn" or "Papa Bach"? And if the latter, which one, hint, probably not the more famous Johann Sebastian.So Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809) gets called that as he largely invented the modern form of the string quartet and the symphony (of which he composed 104), starting in the late 1750s as he held positions with various aristocratic families, following a youth in which he suffered extreme poverty and serious malnutrition. ...

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“The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, 1842

The red death had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the madness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress, and termination...

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Is the Beady-Eyed Religious Fanatic A Major Superspreader Of The Pandemic?

 It now appears that the Rose Garden ceremony on Saturday, Sept. 26, presenting SCOTUS candidate Amy Coney Barrett, who has the beadiest eyes I have ever seen on any human being in my life, has turned into a superspreader event of SARS-Cov2. Among those who may have become infected include the president and his wife, along with at least two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee (Lee of UT and Tillis of NC), the president of Notre Dame University where Barrett was a law school prof, as...

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Ponzi Finance II: quid pro quo

The real story revealed by the New York Times Trump tax returns bombshell is not that Donald Trump paid no taxes in 10 out of 15 years or that he paid $750 in 2016 and 2017. The real story is that he doesn't have net income to service his debt. There is nothing inherently illegal about that. He did it before in the 1980s and when real estate prices stopped rising in 1990, his creditors were left holding the bag.Hyman Minsky wrote about Donald Trump's investment strategy in a 1990 talk, "The...

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A Beady-Eyed Religious Fanatic For The Supreme Court

 Others may not see what I see when I look at a full-face photo of Amy Conet Barrett, but I see someone who looks like a fanatic to me, although that may be me reading in what I have heard of her views on things, she being Trump's nominee for the SCOTUS, with GOPsters in the Senate hypocritically ready to put her in there in time to help Trump steal the election.  I know we are not supposed to pick on people for their religious views, but she does belong to a weird cult, the Praise for...

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