History Professor Heather Cox Richardson at Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, Boston College writes a daily(?) news letter (Letters from an American) which she describes as; “a chronicle of today’s political landscape, but because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American.”...
Read More »Who Has Been Warring Against Christmas?
Who Has Been Warring Against Christmas? Where I am the Third Day of Christmas is just finishing with the news that Grinch Trump has ended his own brief War on Christmas and is signing the Covid-19 relief bill, thereby reinstating unemployment benefits for 14 million people although they’ll miss a week of payments, as well as preventing millions more from being evicted from their rental housing units, along with the Omnibus spending bill so the...
Read More »Trump As The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
Trump As The Grinch Who Stole Christmas So the Congress struggled for months after the House passed a $3.3 trillion followup Covid relief bill, which Senate Majority Leader McConnell blocked and kept blocking. House Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin kept negotiating and coming up with this or that proposal, only to mostly have McConnell shoot it down, or sometimes Pres. Trump himself doing so. Finally after the election, and with...
Read More »Status quo bias and vaccine supplies
Here is a simple thought experiment on the use of scarce vaccine supplies.Suppose that we had tested the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines with one dose per person and discovered that they were 85% effective at preventing covid-19. However, due to an administrative error, we gave some people two doses, and when we analyzed the data it turned out that a two-dose regimen was 95% effective at preventing covid-19. Only 200 million doses of vaccine will be...
Read More »Millions of India’s farmers fight for their economic lives
As a bit of a comparison, the 2018 Distribution of Federal Payroll and Income Taxes shows 761,000 household taxpayers making up 4 tenths of 1% of all taxpayers having the highest income in the US. I am not sure if we can get it as finite as what India shows in wealth. With a population of ~1.3 billion, the wealth of 831 individuals amounts to 25% of the nation’s GDP. The 831 are calling the shots for farmers in India and the nation. “Millions of...
Read More »Politics and Spending Bills In Congress
MacRumors: Apple’s New Privacy-Focused Tracking Prompt Begins Appearing for iOS 14 Users As a privacy measure for their customers, Apple will be requiring developers of iPhone and iPad “apps” to request permission from users to track their activity across other apps and websites for personalized advertising purposes starting early next year. iOS 14.4 should be publicly released in January or February. Facebook pulled out the usual canard; “They...
Read More »Yes, let’s vaccinate twice as many people against covid-19
I am very sympathetic to Robert Waldmann’s argument that we should give twice as many people one dose of the new Pfizer/Moderna vaccines, at least until supply constraints are eased, instead of following the FDA approved vaccination protocol and giving everyone two doses right from the beginning. What follows is a rough way of thinking about the logic and perhaps the magnitudes involved. Let me emphasize that this is just a finger exercise and I am...
Read More »Covid 19 Vaccination: One Dose or Two ?
I am going to write more on the topic of Covid 19 vaccines. I will argue that it would be better to give second (booster) shots only when vaccine supplies are plentiful. I think that so long as the vaccine is in short supply, people should be given one dose. I criticise the current policy of withholding vaccine to make sure that everyone who gets a first dose gets the scheduled booster either 3 weeks later (for the Pfizer vaccine) or 4 weeks later...
Read More »Monarch Butterflies are Disappearing from the Environment
Conservationists were disappointed on Tuesday when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would not recommend putting the monarch on the threatened species list. It’s not that the species isn’t edging to extinction—the monarch meets criteria to be considered threatened, the service admits. But there are “higher priority listing actions.” Rachael Bale, ANIMALS Executive Editor, National Geographic. The Big Question is: Why IS The U.S....
Read More »Quote of the Day – “very, very Concerned”
A comment from Kentucky State Senator Rand Paul on voter turnout. Paul who has falsely claimed the election was “stolen” from President Donald Trump (without any evidence), warned that increased voter turnout in Georgia could cost Republicans the Senate majority and urged Republican state officials to stop encouraging people to vote. Senator Paul is actually very worried about the mailing of absentee ballots for the senate vote given what took...
Read More »