Tag Archives: politics

“Obamagate!” I know, I should probably not waste everybody’s time commenting on this nonsense, but the push on it has been massive, with it seeming to influence a lot of people it should not, so I have decided some push back is called for, even if those who should see it do not.   I am partly triggered in this by getting defriended on Facebook yesterday by a generally intelligent libertarian academic economist I know who started massively linking to...

I am reading this on Bloomberg entitled “Saudi oil rush threatens to disrupt stabilizing U.S. oil market.” These shipments are planned, Saudis are not sending this over out of the goodness of their hearts. Furthermore, the shipments themselves take roughly 21 days to get to the US. The orders were placed over 3 weeks ago. When you have a lot of US capacity which produces at a higher price and we are seeking to become oil independent and we are seeking to...

This is an interesting study.  This link is to the summary.   There is a link there to the full study.   600 people with active disease of over 2 weeks completed a survey to find out just what people are experiencing with the illness.  I find the following most interesting: ● Early testing is crucial, and questions remain around test accuracy: Despite all respondents showing COVID-19 symptoms, 47.8% were either denied testing or not tested for another...

by Ken Melvin Economy’s Role Economy: An Economy is a social entity’s aggregate activity of producing and exchanging goods and services. To date, a large body of knowledge about how economies work has been accumulated; a body of knowledge known as the science of economics. In a Well Functioning Economy, the requisite goods and services are efficiently produced and equitably distributed whilst all the while giving utmost consideration to Human Welfare and...

How Likely Is A Second Wave Of SARS-CoV-2? Dr. Anthony Fauci has testified before a Senate committee that he is worried that there may be a serious “Second Wave” of the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in the United States.  The basis for this fear is the experience over a century ago with the Spanish flu, still deadlier than the current pandemic.  It came in three full waves, and of those the second was easily substantially larger than the other two.  The...

by Ken Melvin What to do About The Schools There needs to be a plan in place that deals with: grade levels, Covid Virus testing, schedules, classroom size, in-school traffic flow patterns, staffing, transportation, …  The how and when are tied together. And yes, all these are interconnected. How to safely get 3,000 high school students to and from school; from class to class; to, into and out of classrooms; to, into and out of the cafeteria; … ...

Via Truthout is a reminder the US Supreme Court has rulings to make: On May 12, the Supreme Court will have an opportunity to rebuke or endorse Trump’s pretensions to monarchical grandeur when it hears oral arguments in three cases that have the potential to redefine the nature and scope of presidential power. The cases before the court are Trump v. Mazars USA, LLP; Trump v. Deutsche Bank AG; and Trump v. Vance. In the first two, the president is trying...

bu Dale Coberly WHAT THE TRUSTEES REPORT REALLY MEANS REALLY “DOING THE MATH” [a few years ago the word “du jour” among journalists about SS was “it’s the math.” Of ourse none of them actually did the math.] [note: i use the tax rate for each the worker and the employer because this is what the worker “sees” and it is what the employer sees. It is also the legally correct division. The Trustees Report usually combines the separate tax rates into one...

About a month ago I wrote on the COVID 19 plight of the Navajo Indians in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham requested military field hospitals to be set up to handle the fast moving virus. Trumps comment was, “Wow, that’s something.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Federal Emergency Management Agency together constructed three reservation field hospitals to be used as alternative care sites according to the tribe earlier...

by Ken Melvin Are capitalism and democracy compatible?  Both Capitalism and Democracy are complicated, complex concepts with varying interpretations. Beginning with a working definition of democracy: Democracy — A government formed of representatives popularly elected by the enfranchised citizenry of the governed entity. Webster’s : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a...