Tag Archives: politics

May 19, 2022 – by Heather Cox Richardson (substack.com), “Letters from An American“ Today, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol sent a letter to Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), asking for his voluntary cooperation in their investigation. The committee members believe he has “information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021,” the day before the...

One of the biggest design flaws in the ACA is that subsidies for low-income families buying policies on insurance exchanges were too low.  Congress raised the subsidies temporarily, but now they are set to expire right before the November election.  From Huffpo: Health insurance premiums for millions of Americans will spike if Congress doesn’t act in the next few months, with particularly big increases in politically contested states, according to...

Adjudged to be AFFIRMED. Barrett, J., delivered the (her first?)  opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh, JJ., joined. Gorsuch, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Hmmm. Fill out an application for a driver’s license, make a mistake, by ticking the wrong box questioning citizenship, the state says you are still qualified to have a driver’s license. and the...

Writing in The Atlantic in May 2021, Hoeg, Prasad, and Ghandi argued that the United States should delay vaccinating children against COVID-19 until vulnerable adults are vaccinated in poorer countries around the world.  A similar argument could now be made for delaying boosters, at least for people who are not at high risk.  An unvaccinated elderly person in India or Africa is thousands of times more likely to die from COVID-19 than a healthy,...

RJS: Focus on Fracking Summary: Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a 21 year low, distillates supplies at a 17 year low; 300,000 bpd global oil surplus in April, despite loss of 1.2 million bpd from Russia & Kazakhstan; natural gas rigs at a 32 month high..   OPEC’s Report on Global Oil for April Thursday of this week saw the release of OPEC’s May Oil Market Report, which includes details on OPEC & global oil data for April, and hence it...

RJS, MarketWatch 666 Summary: Producer Prices Rose 0.5% in April; Record Annual Increase of 16.3% for Final Demand for Goods The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 0.5% in April, as average prices for finished wholesale goods rose by 1.3% while final demand for services was unchanged . . . that increase followed a revised 1.6% increase in March, when average prices for finished wholesale goods rose by 2.4% and...

Coronavirus dashboard for May 13: the virus will gradually become less lethal – because you can only die once, COVID-19 is still a pandemic and will gradually transition to an endemic. A year ago I thought that between nearly universal vaccinations and an increasing percentage of the population already infected, the virus would wane into a background nuisance by now. No more.  I am now thoroughly convinced that an unending series of variants...

I haven’t commented on rumors about Putin’s health.  Lots of people have reasons to spread disinformation, and I have no way of seeing through the smoke.  Still, the rumors are out there.  What should we make of this? Sounds like the Ukrainians are expecting more of this, and plan to try and methodically destroy the new formations. The most interesting interview Ive seen this week is this one by the head of Ukrainian DoD intelligence....

Amazing Republicans are trying to skew the peaceful (so far) protests of pro-choice consisting mostly of women as being violent. Not that they never get angry . . . they can and will. They are not happy with SCOTUS and are making it known peacefully. Cruz and others are trying to make this into something else similar to what Cruz was supporting January 6, 2021. Waiting on V.P. Pence Ted Cruz smugly sitting in the capitol building January 6th...

Andrew writes on healthcare, mostly the PPACA plan and the various metal plans, and the latest gig (ARPA) resulting in lower costs for anyone under 250% FPL and lower costs for anyone higher than 400% FPL. All made possible due to Biden and Democrat’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It will expire EOY 2022 and I doubt Manchin will help with it. Without it and other aid, This all could have been a 2008 Redux. Mostly, what you will catch me...