I am sure borrowers having to use Payday Lenders are thrilled to wait till March 2025. Supreme Court ruling in May, the federal government is expected to get tougher on regulating payday lenders and other firms that offer high-interest, short-term loans. This type of lending — which often targets low-income borrowers — has long drawn fire from consumer groups on grounds that these small-dollar loans quickly balloon when they’re not repaid,...

by Merrill Goozner GoozNews Hospitals are pushing back on an experiment that would put providers on budgets. CMS should ignore their lobbyists and consultants playing games with numbers. Changing the way hospitals and doctors get paid is central to reforming our dysfunctional health care system. Payment reform can achieve better health outcomes, improve the patient experience and help keep overall health care costs in check, the three goals...

Random Walk (student stuff) .[embedded content]

by Lawrence O. Gostin and Sarah Wetter MEDPAGE TODAY — A slew of cases this term could reshape health policy. Undecided Issues still before SCOTUS which should be decided this month. The Justices will then take off for a bit to reconcile the decisions they made causing issues amongst the population. Nothing unusual here, it happens every year. This group of 6-3 appear to be more partisan (right-wing) than prior Justices. Abortion as...

.[embedded content] In den 1980er Jahren hatte die deutsche Rocklegende Udo Lindenberg eine große Anhängerschaft hinter dem Eisernen Vorhang. Besuche zeigten ihm, dass die Menschen in Ostdeutschland im Grunde genommen genauso waren wie im Westen. Er begann Erich Honecker zu bitten, ihm zu erlauben, durch das Land zu touren. Im Sonderzug nach Pankow stellt sich Udo vor, in der DDR zu spielen. Ihm wurde tatsächlich erlaubt, am 25. Oktober 1983 im Palast der Republik in...

This may surprise you. Watch to the end. 

Extract from Thomas Jefferson to “Henry Tompkinson” (Samuel Kercheval) “I am not among those who fear the people. they and not the rich, are our dependance for continued freedom. and to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt . . . if we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries & our comforts, in our labors & our amusements, for our callings...

 Pauperism and “minus-labour” “It is already contained in the concept of the free labourer, that he is a pauper…“ Pauperism and surplus population play brief but strategic roles in the Grundrisse, appearing in the three fragments on pages 397-423, 604-610, and 704-711, respectively, that all deal with the inverted relationship between necessary labour and the superfluous – the first and third fragments also revolving around disposable time. These two themes – or two moments of the same...

One of the climate change denialist memes is that, since plants inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen during the day, then increased CO2 will be *good* for trees. Setting aside the facts that increased desertification and increased coastal flooding are decidedly *not* good for trees, a recent study suggests that it more CO2 doesn’t necessarily result in more/faster tree growth:“Why not? Our new research, published today in Nature, shows it comes...

Today, the Supreme Court released its opinion in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Here’s a little background—you can be forgiven if you’ve lost track of how this case has evolved since I first wrote about District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s order granting a nationwide injunction banning mifepristone in April of 2023. In April of 2023, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a federal district judge in Amarillo, Texas, entered a nationwide injunction banning...