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

GAO Report finds Rural Postal Service Remains Essential

From time to time, Mark Jamison or myself would feature articles from the Save the Post Office blog as authored by Steve Hutkins, a literature professor who teaches “place studies” at the Gallatin School of New York University. Mark Jamison a retired Postmaster for a small town in North Carolina would often write there also. […]

Republicans and Labor

Interesting development last week, Missouri’s state Legislature decided a minimum wage of $10/hour is a hardship for business and too much for Labor. This comes after the MSC sided with St. Louis and Kansas City in setting a minimum wage of $10.10/hour. The Republican legislature decided differently and passed legislation to prevent local communities from […]

Military Times reports top Pentagon posts vacant

The Military Times reports: A handful of Pentagon nominees will be waiting for Senate confirmation when the upper chamber returns in September from its summer recess, but the administration still has dozens of Defense Department positions to fill. Leaving State Department vacancies aside, I thought the Trump readiness rhetoric applied to DOD…not so much I […]

How Long Employees Stay at Tech Companies

This shows <a href = “http://www.businessinsider.com/employee-retention-rate-top-tech-companies-2017-8”>how long employees stay at major tech companies</a>: Not having worked for a tech company, I found these tenures to be pretty short.  I Googled retention at Google (I’m trying to stay on their good side) and found an article suggesting the median tenure at Google is 1.1 years. I imagine […]

Data Scientist Cathy O’Neil: “Algorithms Are Opinions Embedded in Code”

I met Cathy in Cambridge when she spoke at MIT a few years ago. This is  re-posted from Naked Capitalism.  Cathy’s whole TED Talk can be watched after the fold. Data Scientist Cathy O’Neil: “Algorithms Are Opinions Embedded in Code” Cathy O’Neil has a PhD in mathematics from Harvard and is the author of the […]

An economy on autopilot between Scylla and Charybdis

An economy on autopilot between Scylla and Charybdis Interest rates are a vital determinant of longer term growth. While the economy has remained on autopilot for the last several years, with almost no political stimulus or disruption — though that may well change next month — the Fed has to steer a course between the […]

Reports of Obamacare’s death are greatly exaggerated: All counties to be covered for 2018

Reports of Obamacare’s death are greatly exaggerated: All counties to be covered for 2018 Obamacare has now obtained an insurer for every county in the country, defying Republican claims that the program is collapsing. As reported by The Hill, “At one point or another over the past year, more than 80 counties have been at […]