Tag Archives: Hot Topics

Equivalence by Ken Melvin These two things are not the same. Giving a woman the right of choice doesn’t deny others that right of choice; makes no imposition on the rights of others. Denying a woman the right of choice imposes the will of others upon her. When is it lawful for some members of a society to impose their will upon others? What right has the State to impose its will upon its citizens? When it is the writ of law. A State can declare acts to...

Kind of a big deal because Oklahomans rejected Trunp’s Medicaid and Republican block grant-program which would be more vulnerable to cuts of Federal funding.  It is unfortunate Oklahoma did not get on board with the ACA Medicaid expansion as 100% of the costs of the Medicaid expansion from 2014 – 2016 and 90% there after. I could never understand the cold-hearted logic of states in not expanding Medicaid. Much of the costs of expanding Medicaid now would...

(Dan here…David offers a different sort of presentation from the normal for AB. Interesting?…) I’m going on vacation for a few weeks, so I am interrupting my normal blogging for something different. (I’m not sure if you — or anyone — is interested in my Marshall 2020 Project posts, but I’m doing it for myself — and its a good distraction from every day crazy ? Anyways… I’d love to answer your questions about coronavirus, elections, jobs, trade, the...

The US Presidential election as forecast by State polling: tending towards a Biden blowout? Last week I posted a projection of the Electoral College vote based solely on State rather than national polls (since after all that is how the College operates) that have been reported in the last 30 days. There has been extensive polling in the past week, so I have updated the map. Here’s how it works: – States where the race is closer than 3% are shown as...

Going Too Far Unfortunately, it was going to happen, and we who support the movement need to call out those instances where it goes too far.  I am talking about the justified Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, mostly characterized by widespread peaceful protests even in small rural towns that never see such things, and with a solid majority of the American people currently supporting both the BLM and its main demands.  As it is, one should probably not...

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...

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...

by David Zetland    (One handed economist) Interesting stuff “Biohacking life” — a physics geek gets into our metabolism Governments are printing money to “get out of the crisis”, but they are probably sowing the seeds of the next crisis (of inflation? fiscal collapse?) An incredibly interesting dive into Japanese cosmology The American Press Is Destroying Itself (under pressures of political correctness) This is the governance article (good/bad responses...

Writing for the Majority (5-4):  Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the explanation offered by the Trump administration for adding the question “appears to have been contrived.” Justice John Roberts did leave open the possibility of change if the Administration could provide an adequate answer. Executive branch officials must “offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public....

This article by Ezra Klein is excellent.  I can’t do it justice in a blog post, but here is a bit: This is the often neglected heart of nonviolence: It is a strategic confrontation with other human beings. It takes as self-evident that we must continue to live in fellowship with one another. As such, it puts changing each other’s hearts at the center of political action, and then asks what kind of action is likeliest to bring about that transformation....