Tag Archives: politics

In a recent post I suggested that distrust in the government’s handling of covid and in the safety and efficacy of vaccines is mainly the result of a deliberate messaging campaign by conservative media, libertarian propaganda organizations, and Republican politicians to gain political or ideological advantage by fostering distrust.  To illustrate this, I want to examine an essay by Jeffrey Tucker, the founder of the newly created Brownstone...

Matt Yglesias has published an interesting essay at his substack by Simon Bazelon and David Shor arguing that Democrats should introduce stricter means testing into the Child Tax Credit. Their key points are as follows: The current CTC design already has means-testing for very high incomes, which means that the administrative burdens associated with means-testing (making low-income people file tax returns, etc.) are already being...

Addendum to US crude supplies at 35 month low; Total oil and product supplies at 6 1/2 year low – Angry Bear (angrybearblog.com) by RJS Authors of Angry Bear Posts and I converse from time to time. We talk about what they write, what its content implies, and what they are thinking. This note came from RJS at Marketwatch 666, etc. Keep it mind as oil production has not returned to prior levels as of yet. The US has been drawing down its underground...

People really, truly hate being played for suckers.  Rick Hasen: “You could look at 2020 as the nadir of American democratic processes, or you could look at it as a dress rehearsal,” says Hasen, a professor of law at UC Irvine.To understand this fragile moment for American democracy, you could take a 30,000-foot view of a nation at the doorstep of a constitutional crisis, as Robert Kagan recently did for the Washington Post. Or you could simply...

I am no attorney. However my experience has caused me to learn the law an how it applies to us. I have learned attorneys are not necessarily honest with plebeians, You know us butchers, bakers, candle stick makers or collectively anyone at all. As a just-out-of-boot-camo Marine private, I can remember one Corporal saying this to us at Pendleton. Different story for another time. Yesterday (September 25, 2021, Robert Reich had an interesting...

August Job Growth Was Twice as Fast in States That Retained UI – “People’s Policy Project,” Matt Bruenig, September 21, 2021 I ran across this author and his site while reading a commentary (referencing Matt Bruenig’s story) on McDonalds experience in Denmark at Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism. Since my background over 40 odd years has been in manufacturing and the impact of direct Labor on it, I was drawn to that article and visited Matt’s site....

Commenter and Blogger RJS adds more detail to what I would suggest is a coming shortage of oil and oil products. Focus on Fracking US crude supplies at a 35 month low; total supplies of oil and all products made from it at a 6 1/2 year low… US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending September 17th indicated that despite sizeable increases in our oilfield production and our oil imports, we still needed to...

President Biden’s temporary ARPA Improves ACA Subsidies through 2022. xpostfactoid: Will 60-64 year-olds have a choice between Medicare and Obamacare? What will that look like?, ARP puts more ‘affordable’ in the Affordable Care Act | healthinsurance.org and How the American Rescue Plan Act will boost marketplace premium subsidies | healthinsurance.org If you have not been reading any of what is going on with the ACA and Medicare; it is time...

As a subscriber to Professor Heather Cox – Richardson’s “Letters From An American,” I have access to each daily article. And as a follow up to yesterday’s “Letters From An American,” today’s, September 23, 2021 submission gives additional detail to the amount of effort made to subvert the January 6th certification of the election by Congress. As detailed in this edition, there were four distinct players or Trump staff who laid much of the...

Online Voting  Yes, a wonderful innovation!!!  No, I had not heard of this before, although maybe somebody reading this had encountered it.  So, where is this fabulous innovation being adopted?  Why Mother Russia!  So polls showed the United Russia Party that supports Vladimir Putin getting only 30% support for the Duma election that just happened.  But while I have not seen specific numbers, it is my understanding that they have been reelected as...