I’m on roughly a zillion animal welfare organization email lists, and I received an email this morning, with a pic of a baby polar bear, from the Environmental Defense Fund, announcing a three-day extension, until midnight tonight, of two  charitable trusts’ matching of donations–one a tripling, the other a doubling. I thought I’d pass along […]

The NPR radio show “Market Place” did an interview with President Obama last week.  As they do in such interviews he was asked to describe his job in 5 words or less.   This is what President Obama stated: My job is to: Keep the American people safe and to create a platform for hard working people to succeed. […]

by Sandwichman at Econospeak Stinting and saving… without stint or shirk! ‘Tis work, work, work, without stint or shirk. Till the world of his wares is full; This worker, I trow, we all of us know, And his name it is John Bull. —- “Oh, then,” cried the lad, “where’s the good, I should like […]

Paul Krugman is making a case that asset prices are not high once you realize that interest rates are not artificially low. So why are interest rates not artificially low? He states… “Once you accept the possibility that rates belong where they are, or even a bit lower, to correspond to the Wicksellian natural rate, […]

by Joseph Joyce China’s Outward FDI According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s latest World Investment Report Overview 2014, Foreign Direct Investment inflows to China reached $124 billion last year, while outflows rose to $101 billion. The Report anticipates that outflows will surpass inflows within the next few years, changing China from […]

Reduction in face to face services Summary–Don’t worry, people! We not going to take away all your local SSA offices. Perish the thought! We’re just going to “consolidate” some to provide “better service.” Any thought given to asking for more money to keep current system and improve it? Naw, wouldn’t want to raise anyone in […]

by New deal democrat at Bondadd blog on Monday morning: A thought for Sunday: the new 3/5’s Rule and plight of the DREAMers The 3/5’s rule was one of the ugly compromises that had to be made in order to bring the slave-owning South into the Federal republic under the Constitution.  It stated: Representatives and […]

I thought it worthwhile to re-post this quote from a time before the Tea Party even thought of being as a reminder that the current struggle between the Republican ‘Establishment’ and the Tea Party has nothing to do with the former being some remnant of the 50s-60s era of mainstream Republicans being the ‘Goo-Goo’ Party. […]

There are what I perceived as problems with the Brookings Study. Just one example: they base much of their analyses upon “lifetime earnings associated with earning a bachelor’s degree”. The average lifetimes earnings of degree holders is certainly skewed significantly upwards by the top 10% of earners (who account for over 40% of all earnings, […]