Tag Archives: politics

(Dan here…better late posted here than not…. )  by New Deal democrat HEADLINES: +313,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 4.1% U6 underemployment rate unchanged at 8.2% Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now: declined -40,000 from 5.171 million to 5.131 million Part time for economic reasons: rose 171,000 from 4.989 million...

I met Lynn while working with Alan Collinge of the Student Loan Justice Organization. She too has been working with Alan to call attention to the plight of students who took loans out to pay for college and the mishandling by servicers of them. The first story is of an older man who took out a Parent Plus Loan for his daughter, who has since died, and he is paying off the loan through garnished Social Security checks. The second story is a time table and...

It is unfair for me to pick on Paul Kane writing in the Washington Post, but he does seem to me to be a clear example of political reporters who interview operatives and quote them and do not look at relevant publicly available data. The main point of the article is that Republicans are in trouble, because they might lose a special congressional election in deep red PA-18 (which hasn’t gone Democratic since it was created with roughly its current...

One third of the way to the 2020 Presidential election Today marks 16 months since the 2016 election, and 32 months before the one in 2020. We are one third of the way through.  Barring a major industrial or nuclear war, we are going to make it. The only major legislative accomplishment so far is the pro-cyclical, lopsided tax cut giveaway to corporations and the wealthy.  Additionally a bunch of lifetime judicial appointments have been made. On the...

As taken from the comments section. EMichael’s commentary on temperature and its impact. Interesting. “Air conditioning has changed demographics, too. It’s hard to imagine the rise of cities like Dubai or Singapore without it. As residential units spread rapidly across America in the second half of the 20th century, the population in the “sun belt” – the warmer south of the country, from Florida to California – boomed from 28% of Americans to 40%. As...

There are no loud guns shots in the middle of the night. No screams for help or sounds of cars speeding away. No police sirens or flashing lights. It is pretty quiet when someone ODs on Opioids unless someone finds them before it is too late. As I wrote earlier; “From 2006 to 2015, pharmaceutical companies spent $880 million in lobbying state and federal legislatures and contributing to campaigns to prevent laws restricting Opioid prescriptions. Opioid...

(Dan here…Better late than never!) A thought for Sunday: the march of demographics and the 2018 midterms Below is a graph showing that the older the demographic (up until age 80), the bigger the turnout during midterm elections. The data behind this graph isn’t just from 2014, but from a series of midterm elections over time — in other words, it has been durable over time. My purpose in this post is show that, even if these percentages hold in this...

Jeffrey Sachs on Trump’s Trade Fallacies I heard on some news show an incredibly stupid statement from our President earlier today and in utter disbelief fired off this comment on some blog: Trump equates our trade deficit with us being ripped off. Let’s do this as a simple example. You walk into Best Buy and purchase a $1000 computer but do not have cash. So you put it on your credit card incurring a $1000 liability. Even though you now have the...

Saudi Crown Prince Tortures Fellow Princes A new report by Hugh Miles at Middle East Monitor, Is the “Saudi Elite Cannibalizing Itself?” by Juan Cole, reports the recent purge of supposedly corrupt princes and high officials was (and continues to be) much more horrendous than previously reported, which I fear does not surprise me. Apparently Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), whom I have previously posted about here, hired mercenaries to...

Janet Colbert of Stop The Organized Pill Pushers Blog: “The death rate from Opioids continues to escalate year over year due to Florida ignoring the opiate epidemic for so long. Since STOPPNow (Stop The Organized Pill Pushers) started posting, the death rate went from 7/day in Florida. to 14/day. To keep the pressure on the legislature, I (Janet Colbert) will keep the Stoppnow.com site updated when we have bills that will need support to become law.”...