Tag Archives: politics

Really modest and meant seriously (apologies to Swift). All Senators and Representatives get a full pension for their natural lives (equal to salary)They may never ever receive any money from any entity other than the Federal Government. No salary and all investments must be in Treasury securities (oh and nooo royalties – ever). No revolving door, no financial interests other than avoiding US Treasury default on salary, pension, interest and...

On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a program to study the health effects of climate change, especially on disadvantaged communities (NYT): The Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, which the administration announced on Monday, will be the first federal program aimed specifically at understanding how planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels also affect human health.  It will fall under...

Coronavirus dashboard: the Delta wave starts to recede in the South, and migrates North Ultimately, that I have to continue to post this material is depressing. At least 80% of all US adults and most teenagers should have been fully vaccinated by now, with the threat of mass outbreaks, even from Delta, retreating into the past.So let me begin with the best graphic representation I have seen so far of where the resistance to vaccination is coming...

John Oliver had a great segment a while back on vaccine hesitancy, in which he shows Tucker Carlson asking absurdly loaded questions about the safety and efficacy of the covid vaccines.  You can see the clip here, the Tucker Carlson bit is around 6:15 to 7:45. I bring this up not to praise Oliver or dump on Carlson, but to point out that Carlson’s disingenuous schtick has a name – “just asking questions”, or JAQing off: Just asking...

Via Boudreaux, over at Reason, we can read this – evidence, Boudreaux tells us, of “covid hysteria”: Amherst College in Massachusetts is welcoming students back to campus by implementing some of the most restrictive COVID-19 mitigation efforts anywhere in the country.  Administrators will now require students to wear two masks while indoors, get tested every other week, eschew large social interactions, and generally refrain from leaving school...

I believe that politicians have some discretion to set policy, and that they should use that discretion to enact the substantively best policies they can, taking account of political and policy constraints.  Political constraints include the need to satisfy voters and win elections, the status-quo bias in public opinion, low levels of political trust, and the limited policymaking capacity of our institutions.  (In the words of political scientist...

Are Former Professors As National Leaders More Prone To Black Swan Events That Overthrow Their Governments?  Probably not, but recent events in Afghanistan suggest an example.  This would be the sudden departure just over two weeks ago on Aug. 15 from Kabul of then Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, which triggered the sudden collapse of his government and the unexpectedly sudden takeover of Kabul by the Taliban. Even they did not see this coming. ...

This is one of the great truths of politics, one that political actors exploit for advantage or ignore at their peril. Suppose that there is a moral norm against littering in your neighborhood.  You support the norm even when it is not convenient for you to do so.  When someone litters, you could be upset simply because littering is harmful (the pure utilitarian attitude), or you could be upset that they are getting an unfair advantage by breaking...

Physician signing bonuses reach $240,000, ASCs promote long term ROI (beckersasc.com) While the median physician signing bonus was $29,656, physicians on the high end of the spectrum were offered $240,000 or more. While signing bonuses at the high end of the spectrum were around $140,000 more than they were in 2019-20, they were down from the 2015-16 high of $350,000. Hospitals often are able to provide large signing bonuses, while physicians...

Colored transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus particles. Credit: National Infection Service/SCI.Commenter and blogger, Prof. Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology  In the unceasing effort by the Right to politicize and weaponize the COVID-19 pandemic, some politicians have seized on a recent paper from Israel claiming that natural infection provides better protection than two doses of the Pfizer vaccine....