Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

How Does the World’s Leading Economy and the Rest of the World Prepare for Disease Outbreaks, Epidemics, and Pandemics?

The CDC “As demonstrated in the PHEP funding chart above, CDC continues to work with reduced financial resources, which similarly affects state, local, and insular area public health departments. These and other funding decreases have resulted in more than 45,700 job losses at state and local health departments since 2008. These losses make it difficult […]

The Big Marquette Law School Walker/Burke Poll Coincidence

The latest Marquette Law School poll shows Scott Walker with 47 percent of likely voters, and Mary Burke with 47 percent of likely voters. Despite the last Marquette poll showing Walker up five points, the new poll, along with the polling average, shows this is very much a race. — Paul Waldman, the Washington Post, this evening […]

International Debt and Financial Crises

by Joseph Joyce  (re-posted from Capital Ebbs and Flows) International Debt and Financial Crises The latest issue of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook has a chapter on global imbalances that discusses the evolution of net foreign assets (also known as the net international investment position) in debtor and creditor nations. The authors warn that increases […]

It’s long, long, LONG past time for Congress to restructure the Judicial Misconduct Complaint mechanism so that it’s no longer a comically flagrant sham designed and controlled completely by members of the federal judiciary. Really. It’s long, long, long, long past time.

Yes, folks. This really is what happened. And were that not such a high-profile matter because the conduct at issue occurred very publicly and was reported in the news media, the misconduct-complaint process never would have gotten beyond the mechanical first step. I’ve mentioned before here at AB that every time there is a movement […]

Try THIS, Michelle Nunn ….

Dem Senate candidate Michelle Nunn is up with a new ad that contains footage of GOPer David Perdue telling a local TV station that he is “proud” of his outsourcing past. This footage could prove especially potent in a state with such high unemployment, but Nunn trails Perdue by nearly four points in the polling average, which is […]

The appalling failure today of Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts and Samuel Alito [Updated]

This speaks for itself.  I’m sure that Kennedy, Roberts and Alito call this ‘freedom’.  I won’t guess at what Sotomayor and Kagan call it.  But what Breyer calls it, or should, is conflict of interest.  Back when Breyer was lead counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, he helped draft the Federal Sentencing Guidelines—a really appalling […]