Tag Archives: politics

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,...

Intercompany Guarantee Fees and Trump’s Lido City Loan Matthew Yglesias notes: Trump stands to gain from an Indonesian project that got a $500 million loan right before he flip-flopped on ZTE… But it also happened the same week a Chinese state-owned company came through with hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, some of which will go to facilitate the construction of Trump-branded properties in Indonesia. Does anyone know what the interest rate will...

The State of Michigan Legislature is applying for an ACA Waiver as I pointed out in my post Why States Should Not Be Allowed to Alter the ACA with Waviers This is a relief valve for “counties” with high unemployment. In effect if Michigan counties have a high unemployment rate (8.5% or above), the unemployed workers in that county can have Medicaid until such time as the Unemployment Rate drops to 5%. Then the workers are expected to seek employment to...

(Dan here…unemployment rates were about the same at 3.1 per cent (M) and 3.0 per cent (W). Taking a look at other measures of the success of an economy for the average person is well displayed here) Via Eeconomic Policy Institute comes this study: Since 2010, Minnesota’s economy has performed far better for working families than Wisconsin’s… At the time of the November 2010 elections, most states were still reeling from the economic devastation caused...

[embedded content] Having talked about the proposed state High Risk Pools and why they are bad; Charles Gaba at ACASignups.net turns his attention to the proposed Short Term Plans and why they are also bad. Keep in mind the proposed Short Term Plans are not the same as the ACA Catastrophic plans. Most of the protection found in the ACA plans are not in the proposed short term plans. This would include insurability, rates, pre-exiting conditions,...

Sorry for the title which is pure click bait. I would like to discuss a reform of the Stability and Growth Pact proposed by Agnès Bénassy-Quéré Markus Brunnermeier, Henrik Enderlein, Emmanuel Farhi, Marcel Fratzscher, Clemens Fuest, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, Philippe Martin, Jean Pisani-Ferry, Hélène Rey, Isabel Schnabel, Nicolas Véron, Beatrice Weder di Mauro, and Jeromin Zettelmeyer in CEPR Policy Insight 91 “Reconciling risk sharing with...

CBO Director Keith Hall responded to a request from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to project the impact of the $7 billion CHIP rescission package. The CBO letter estimates that the rescission “would not affect outlays, or the number of individuals with insurance coverage.” Well this is good news, I guess? Except, the key here is this is based upon the present number of children enrolled in CHIPS. However, “In its estimates, CBO doesn’t (and can’t)...