Tag Archives: politics

NYU Prof. Steve Hutkins at Save the Post Office An update on the overtime issue in Judge Marrero’s order in Jones v USPS. The proposed order indicated that the parties had not agreed on the wording of the overtime passage, but the final order issued on Sept. 25 said, “USPS shall pre-approve all overtime that has been or will be requested for the time period beginning October 26, 2020 and continuing through November 6, 2020.” That seemed to indicate that...

Prof. Steve Hutkins at Save the Post Office New in Jones v USPS: Late yesterday, Judge Marrero issued his order on the case. It’s essentially the same as the proposed order, but the parties are still trying to work out the overtime issue. The Postal Service has provided much more information to the Court concerning its policies and practices in handling Election Mail over the coming weeks: DOJ letter to Judge Marrero, Sept. 25, 2020: This letter describes...

The 2020 Presidential and Senate nowcast: not a good week for Biden Here is my weekly update on the 2020 elections, based on State rather than national polling in the past 30 days, since that directly reflects what is likely to happen in the Electoral College. Remember that polls are really only nowcasts, not forecasts. They are snapshots of the present; there is no guarantee they will be identical or nearly identical in early November. Let’s begin...

A Beady-Eyed Religious Fanatic For The Supreme Court  Others may not see what I see when I look at a full-face photo of Amy Conet Barrett, but I see someone who looks like a fanatic to me, although that may be me reading in what I have heard of her views on things, she being Trump’s nominee for the SCOTUS, with GOPsters in the Senate hypocritically ready to put her in there in time to help Trump steal the election. I know we are not supposed to pick on...

The real story revealed by the New York Times Trump tax returns bombshell is not that Donald Trump paid no taxes in 10 out of 15 years or that he paid $750 in 2016 and 2017. The real story is that he doesn’t have net income to service his debt. There is nothing inherently illegal about that. He did it before in the 1980s and when real estate prices stopped rising in 1990, his creditors were left holding the bag. Hyman Minsky wrote about Donald Trump’s...

I had written on the high cost of pharmaceuticals late 2019, “Another Look at Drug Pricing, Costs, and Why” citing from the World Health Organization, the ICER, JAMA Network, Health Affairs, and my own posts (links below and in text). You will find the some of the same articles cited in new commentary of increased drug costs in the Washington Post, Kaiser Health News, and Medpage Today. It appears the three of them have caught up with Angry Bear’s...

Prof. Steve Hutkins at Save the Post Office The plaintiffs in Jones have reached an agreement with the Postal Service that settles the case for now. The outline of the agreement is similar to the commitments in the Sept. 24 Standup Talk on Election Mail, but there are some more specific details. The agreement states the following (the rest is quoted from the proposed order): The USPS shall, to the extent that excess capacity permits, treat all Election...

I stumbled across this article at Electoral-Vote .com.  They have a chart showing the control of the Secretary of States, Legislatures and Executive offices.   They combine that with the current polling in each state and electoral votes.  Their conclusion, more than hell would have to freeze over for Trump and the Atlantic’s article warning of a post election electoral steal to happen. We have addressed many of the concerns that Davis and Gellman raise,...

In the 19th century, employers stove off employee demands by bringing in immigrants willing to work under existing conditions. In the 20th Century, consequent the Great Depression, prohibition of child labor, immigration reform, … it was no longer so easy for employers to ignore workers demands. Unions took root and membership grew and so did the workers’ wages and benefits; welcome: the end of child labor, the 40 hour week, living wages, and paid...

[embedded content]In a face off with Republican candidate Paul Junge, Congresswoman Slotkin lets Paul Junge know Republicans must have a healthcare plan as they don’t. In this clip she gives her personal story about her mom having cancer and being unable to get insurance at a reasonable cost or not at all. There are many more like Ms. Slotkin’s mom in the same category who are winging it so to speak. I for one was faced with the same dilemma from time to...