Tag Archives: Hot Topics

Biden and the Press Commenter Dale Coberly: I ran across this in Salon newsletter, “Your daily update from Salon” Written by Brett Bachman. Buried deep in President Joe Biden’s Tuesday speech on America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was a line . . . one of those uncanny truth-telling moments that Washington power brokers rarely indulge in: Quote “This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It’s about ending an era of...

MarketWatch 666’s RJS: 5th record in a row; job openings have risen 62% so far this year . . . Here is the Fred graph. Job Openings: Total Nonfarm (JTSJOL) | FRED | St. Louis Fed (stlouisfed.org)Despite record highs, hiring is down and layoffs are up . . . Something is clearly broken. July Job Openings at Record High after June Record Revised Higher; Hiring Down, Job Quitting  and  Layoffs  Higher The Job Openings and Labor Turnover...

Click on image to enlarge . . . Tags: California Vote

This is a C&P from Treehugger, a site Slate was sponsoring about a decade or so ago. Interesting place which writes various articles on tiny homes, environment, etc. The article is about light pollution and how it impacts the environment. When I was the VP for the Township Planning Commission, we had passed an ordinance which regulated light pollution. We were intent on keeping lighting on site rather than allowing it to spray the area with...

I found this part of RJS’s report to be particularly interesting about the potential environmental risks in Louisiana resulting from a buildup of waste within the state. This has been accumulated over the years. There does not appear to be an effort to eliminate the waste and chemicals. ____________ Focus on Fracking: natural gas price at a 33 month high; US crude supplies at a 23 month low; Ida shuts down Gulf, MarketWatch 666, Blogger RJS...

Focus on Fracking: natural gas price at a 33 month high; US crude supplies at a 23 month low; Ida shuts down Gulf Blogger RJS, MarketWatch 666 Oil Prices Oil prices ended slightly higher this week as oil traders apparently judged that Hurricane Ida’s damage to oil production was greater than the storm’s damage to refining and to fuel demand .  .  . after rising more than 10% last week as Chinese virus cases fell to zero, a quarter of Mexico’s...

Quite a few commentaries about Covid and a lasting impact from Covid as it migrates to various organs in both the old, young, and healthy. Of course, there are more articles than what I listed here. Waning Immunity Is Not a Crisis, Right Now – The Atlantic Waning is not disappearance, though. Even if vaccinated people sometimes do get infected and sick, it will happen less often, and less severely. That, in turn, makes it much harder for the...

Trade Deficit Fell 4.3% in July After 2nd Quarter Deficits Were Revised Lower, MarketWatch 666 blogger RJS Our trade deficit fell 4.3% in July as the value of our exports increased while the value of our imports decreased slightly….the Commerce Dept report on our international trade in goods and services for July indicated that our seasonally adjusted goods and services trade deficit decreased by $3.2 billion to a rounded $70.1 billion in July,...

Labeling for Increased Profits, Farmer and Economist, Michael Smith It is a well-known marketing ploy to label, relabel, and even mislabel a product again and again to increase sales. We think of the almighty Coke and the multiple iterations that they have had just on their cans. We’ve also seen consumer products like paper towels that have additives that make a mess disappear much faster, diapers that hold, ahem, waste better, and other...

Why Hospitals and Health Insurers Didn’t Want You to See Their Prices – The New York Times (nytimes.com) Sarah Kliff and Josh Katz Some Background Tipping the balance to single payer? I believe Kliff and Tucker article in the NYT Times on hospitals and insurance helps to tip the balance. It is revealing to see what different hospitals will charge for the same procedure and what various insurance companies will payout to cover the same...