“Kavanaugh Helps Gut Roe, Critics Recount All the Times Susan Collins Said He Wouldn’t,” Common Dreams, Jake Johnson I am stealing this from Common Dreams. Senator (sigh) Susan Collins has done this on numerous times in the past and pulls the football away, again when Dems get ready to kick it. She knows she is […]
Producer sector remains on fire, while two most important indicators of consumer sector falter As has been the pattern for the last several months, August data started out with a strong reading on manufacturing, while July ended with weak data on housing construction. As a side note, the latest read on motor vehicle sales also […]
Jobless claims show continuing improvement, now well within normal expansion range Way back at the beginning of spring, I set a goal of initial claims being 400,000 or less by Labor Day as a marker for a good COVID recovery – which I was reminded of because the aforesaid holiday is this weekend. Well, we […]
In a recent post I argued for political pragmatism, which I described as follows: I believe that politicians have some discretion to set policy, and that they should use that discretion to enact the substantively best policies they can, taking account of political and policy constraints. Political constraints include the need to satisfy voters and […]
Roe v. Wade hasn’t been overturned. The rule of law might have been; The Washington Post, Erwin Chemerinsky Dean at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky; “The majority was mute on the right to privacy, abandoned its constitutional role and held, indirectly but unmistakably, that the Constitution is a mere […]
Really modest and meant seriously (apologies to Swift). All Senators and Representatives get a full pension for their natural lives (equal to salary) They may never ever receive any money from any entity other than the Federal Government. No salary and all investments must be in Treasury securities (oh and nooo royalties – ever). No […]
On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a program to study the health effects of climate change, especially on disadvantaged communities (NYT): The Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, which the administration announced on Monday, will be the first federal program aimed specifically at understanding how planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from […]
Coronavirus dashboard: the Delta wave starts to recede in the South, and migrates North Ultimately, that I have to continue to post this material is depressing. At least 80% of all US adults and most teenagers should have been fully vaccinated by now, with the threat of mass outbreaks, even from Delta, retreating into the […]
As debates about booster shots heat up, what is known about the duration of vaccine-based immunity is still evolving. Prof. Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Saint Louis University School of Medicine. Joel participated in the early trials of the Moderna mRNA vaccines for Covid-19. He was inoculated with the true vaccine as determined by […]