Tag Archives: politics

The GOP has crossed the Rubicon  – by New Deal democrat In the Roman Republic, military leaders automatically lost their legal authority to command at the Rubicon River in northern Italy. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his legions, it was an act of war against the Republic. With the filing of their  Amicus brief in the Supreme Court this past week, the GOP as represented by their Congressional delegation similarly finally broke...

Prof. Peter Dorman of Evergreen College writes at EconoSpeak and portrays Matt Yglesias’s retrospective on how the healthcare establishment failed the public when passing information on facemasks, hand-washing, distancing, etc., and how Covid is transmitted. The direct result of not following these practices or casting doubt upon them is an elevation of Covid cases which strains the capacity and logistics of healthcare facilities, the equipment...

Given the makeup of the Supreme Court after 3 conservative appointments to the court, I was concerned as to what the outcome of the Court’s decision might be. Whether they would agree with Texas and trump was the concern. The italicized sentence is basically the Court’s decision. The note from Alito and Thomas being an acceptance of the motion for review and not grant the petitioner relief. “The justices’ dissents, though, are considerably less...

Ophelia at “Butterflies and Wheels” has a commentary about the protests in front of the home of Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson which makes for a good read along with the comments. Follow the link. It is one thing to write a letter of protest to a politician and quite another to invade the proximity of a person’s home, within shouting distance, and upset the occupants which included a child. Meanwhile the Republican leaders...

Four measures of labor market losses in the pandemic Below is a graph of 4 ways of measuring the downturn in the labor market due to the pandemic:1. Payrolls (blue) – this is the headline jobs number from the establishment survey2. Civilian employment (green) – this is the equivalent number from the household survey.3. Aggregate hours worked (red) – tracks hours rather than jobs.4. Aggregate payrolls (gold) – tracks total payrolls rather than...

The libertarian vs. populist trade-off in the 2020 election and beyond A few weekends ago I wrote that  “the Democratic ‘brand’ is ‘socially liberal, economically moderate,’ while the US electorate as a whole is socially moderate and economically progressive” citing a scatterplot graph of the 2016 electorate; and that: The path forward is to embrace, and pass, some simple economic fixes … that materially improve – and are *seen* to materially...

Constructing An Alternative Reality  This has been gradually developing for about the last quarter of a century or so.  While there was some of this going on before, it took off after the Newt Gingrich-led GOP took over Congress in the 94 election and Rush Limbaugh began his radio show.  Not long after Fox News began a more aggressive stance against President Clinton, pushing any and every scandal that would lead to his impeachment for lying about...

I am often critical of libertarian economist Donald Boudreaux. This morning, I sent him an email criticizing a post of his in which he cited a study claiming that pcr tests for covid have a false positive rate of 80% or more. I pointed out that this is obvious nonsense, since overall test positivity rates, which include both false and true positives, have generally been in the 4% to 10% range. I also criticized him quite harshly for passing this...

Reader and poster Coberly updating Angry Bear readers on recent Social Security findings in the 2020 report. Reader Bruce Krasting had alerted Angry Bear to the publication by the Social Security Trustees of a “revised baseline” that includes effects of the Covid recession on their projections otherwise from the 2020 Trustees Report. “Updated Baseline for Actuarial Status of the OASI and DI Trust Funds, Reflecting Pandemic andRecession Effects“...

On March 15, 2019 a gunman opened fire on worshipers at two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques, killing 50 and wounding around as many. Survivors of gunshot wounds often have traumatic injuries that require multiple surgeries and leave them severely disabled for life. Before embarking on his rampage, the alleged gunman broadcast over the internet a “manifesto” outlining the motive for his deed. In his manifesto, the alleged perpetrator claimed to have...