Tag Archives: politics

Carlo Cottarelli was asked to try to form an Italian government by President Sergio Mattarella. There is no chance that Cottarelli will obtain the confidence of Parliament (parties including a majority of deputies have brought up the possibility of impeaching Mattarella for nominating Cottarelli). Mattarella is using his extraordinary powers to fight populist nationalists who disrespected the Euro. Cottarelli is an odd choice for an anti-anti-globalist —...

(literally the surrender of Conte but a reference to The Big Gundown). updated to comply with the Italian criminal code (which forbids vilifying the President of the Republic) I have to write about Italian politics, because everyone is (and I live in Rome) but you don’t have to read it. I will try one paragraph of background. In the last election angry Italians gave a very thin majority to two extremist parties the movimento 5 stell and La Lega Nord is...

Memorial Day 2018 For all those, of whatever race, creed, color, or nationality, who gave their lives so that government of the People, by the People, and for the People shall not perish from the Earth: < Gettysburg National Cemetery Antietam National Cemetery Arlington National Cemetery May they rest in peace.

Regulation: A Gut Check How do we get the word out that our underlying conception of how regulations should be designed and enforced needs to change? The New York Times has an ominous article about the overuse of antibiotics by the livestock industry and its risks for animal health and ours.  Flooding our digestive system with these drugs damages the gut microbiome we depend on for nutrition and waste processing, and it promotes the evolution of...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Charles Gaba reviews the three leg stool necessary to support Healthcare and why each of those legs are necessaryfor healthcare to be important today. Charles reviews Enrollee Responsibility, Career Responsibility, and Government Responsibly (the three legs) necessary to support Healthcare in the US, explains how each Republican bill has or would have impacted the ACA, […]

Iran Responds to Plan B Juan Cole reports that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameini has responded to Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and Pompeo’s Plan B 12 demands with 6 demands for Europe: 1) condemn the US withdrawal, 2) stop pressing Iran on missile development, 3) criticize any further US boycotts, 4) undo damage to Iran economy of boycotts especially to buy any oil not able to be exported because of them, 5) support financing of Iran...

Plan B on Iran Earlier today (Monday) ne US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, presented this administration’s “Plan B” at the Heritage Foundation on how to deal with Iran following the US’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal, the  JCPOA.  Pompeo presented 12 demands and threatened to impose “the strongest economic sanctions in history.”  The Trump administration may wish to do the latter, but the  refusal of all the other parties to the JCPOA to go along...

The current mania for “job guarantee” policies is making the Sandwichman anxious. I’ve been on the full employment beat for over 20 years so I think I have a pretty good grasp of the terrain. First principle is that there are no panaceas. My favorite policy option — reduction of working time — is not a panacea. Neither is yours. Like my learned friend Max B. Sawicky, I am in favor of a job guarantee — provided it meets MY criteria. The proposals currently...

“The Trump administration wants to effectively pull Title X funding from family planning clinics providing abortion services” as reported in Modern Healthcare. Planned Parenthood while offering other healthcare services would not receive federal funding if they provided any abortion services or referred patients to other facilities that did perform abortions. The Washington Post “For Planned Parenthood abortion stats, ‘3 percent’ and ’94 percent’ are...

The Detroit News story, January 2018 “What MSU Knew” details when the abuse started. For twenty years, the female athletes who engaged in the Michigan State Gymnastics program complained of Dr. Larry Nassar to university representatives. MSU President Lou Anna Simon was amongst those who were informed and had known of the 2014 Title IX complaint and police report filed against an unnamed physician. According to university records and victim’s accounts,...