Tag Archives: politics

“Restoring Medicaid,” What happens when states switch to Block Grants? I came across a NYT article citing Seema Verma’s approval of the Tennessee’s Block Grant recently. The Tennessee Block Grant is mentioned in section ” Revoke The Block Grant Initiative” of my post Restoring Medicaid. What Are Block Grants? Government funded normal Medicaid has established rules for coverage and benefits. In an exchange for greater freedom offered to...

The Federalist Papers #74 on insurrections, treason, and the pardon power: an argument that such pardons would be invalid as “arising in a case of impeachment” The Insurrectionists from January 6 are already asking Trump for pardons. Probably the only thing that would hold him back from doing so is his innate selfishness: what would be the benefit to *him*? The thought that Trump could issue Got Out of Jail Free cards to the very people he...

Two hundred years ago this February, Charles Wentworth Dilke anonymously published a pamphlet titled The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties, deduced from principles of political economy. Four decades later, Karl Marx would describe the pamphlet in his notes as an “important advance on Ricardo.” In his preface to volume two of Capital, Friedrich Engels described the pamphlet as the “farthest outpost of an entire literature which in the...

Me – Talk: Recent article on Health Affairs I tapped into and decided to present here at AB. The topic? As expressed in the title, return Medicaid to its former self and improved upon by the new Biden Administration. I also have been working on additional posts touching upon the history of the opioid epidemic by the numbers, single payer, and a comparison to the a European healthcare model. “In Its First 100 Days, The Biden Administration Must...

Poor Jim Jordan, singled up with no Doug Collins, Trey Gowdy, Darrell Issa, Louis Gohmert, Mo Brooks, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, …, along side him, on 12 and 13 Jan, 2021, tried valiantly, well, at least loudly and indignantly, to pull the Republican wagon out of the ditch; the ditch that they all had taken a hand in lying the party into. Proving once again that there are none so as indignant as the scoundrel(s), Jordan indignantly rose to accuse his...

An Appointment I Disapprove Of  While many of them could be more progressive, given that Biden himself is largely a moderate making moderate nods to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in his appointments, I have largely been not too dissatisfied with appointments made so far by President-Elect Biden.  My only surprise is that a bunch of people set their pants on fire over the appointment of Neera Tanden as OMB director while barely a...

Getting the Shakespearean Part Right  At his rally before the invasion of the Capitol, Trump said to his minions: And after this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down–We’re going to walk down. Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol. But then he ducked back into the White House to watch the whole thing on TV.  That’s how you know he’s Richard III and not Henry...

Post-Putsch: Why There Should Be Consequences for Enablers of the Capitol Invasion  I usually find myself agreeing with Glenn Greenwald, but not today.  GG has posted a heartfelt warning against overreaction to the attempted fur-and-horn putsch at the Capitol Building Wednesday.  He says the mob trampled on symbols of state power but otherwise did little of consequence, and vilifying them and their supporters will lead to repressive overreach,...

When Fox News and Newsmax recently accused voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems of rigging the 2020 election results, Dominion quickly and vigorously struck back at the two with a threat of civil lawsuit; a suit claiming that they, Dominion, had been harmed by the actions of Fox News and Newsmax. Consequent Dominion’s filing, Fox and Newsmax began to quickly and forthwith profusely apologize for and correct their ‘misstatements’....

How are libertarian lovers of liberty responding to the assault on democracy and the rule of law that took place in the Capitol Wednesday? Over at Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen speaks out eloquently against Trump’s anti-democratic behavior.  Just kidding!  In a post entitled “That was then, this is now” Cowen reminds us about the terrorist attack on Congress by Puerto Rican nationalists in 1954.  But there is no analogy between a terrorist...