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

Rural Hospital Closures Are Caused by Inadequate Payments from Private Health Plans

Earlier in the article, it is said . . . Over the past decade, more than 100 rural hospitals have closed. The result of the closures being millions of Americans who live in those communities no longer have access to an emergency room, in patient care, much less doctors. This is healthcare and hospital services […]

The Courts

Some history on judge appointments and what about the present with criminal defense lawyer, Emil Bove? A friend of Trump? Packing the Courts, Civil Discourse The date was February 5, 1937. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had just been reelected in a landslide, taking the Electoral College by a vote of 523 to 8 and winning the largest popular […]

The future of genomics

About six years ago, I had my genome sequenced at 30-50x coverage by Veritas. It cost me $200. For an additional $100, I purchased my variant call file, which identified all the differences between my genome sequence and the reference human genome sequence. A friend of mine then built a spreadsheet for me so I […]

The Republican House Bill is More Than Cuts to Medicaid

Charles Gaba (former Michigan neighbor) at ACA Signups gives an excellent take on what is going to happen once subsidies disappear at year end, cuts to Medicaid, and increased premiums for ACA insurance. And yes, I said increased ACA insurance premiums. Charles states there will be people leaving the ACA due to premium increases. I […]

Waste, fraud and abuse, thy name is DOGE

So far, the only “efficiencies” realized by DOGE have been (1) keeping Elon Musk’s name and image in the news and (2) the systematic destruction of federal programs and the expertise to run them efficiently. Like Elon’s SpaceX rockets, his DOGE has mostly failed on the launch. “On the first day of his second term, […]

Repeat home sales through April confirm housing market is well on its way to rebalancing

 – by New Deal democrat Yesterday the existing home sales report showed continued deceleration in YoY price increases to 1.3%, along with an increase in inventory of houses for sale, indicative of the ongoing rebalancing of the housing market. This morning’s repeat home sales reports from the FHFA and S&P Case Shiller strongly confirmed that deceleration and ongoing […]

Why Hundreds of Farmworkers Suddenly Vanished, Leaving Crops to Rot

It appears some bad times are coming for the United States. We are attacking the Labor that will do the jobs legal US Citizens will not do for the money paid to illegals and legal immigrants. “Ghost Farms of Texas: Why Hundreds of Farmworkers Suddenly Vanished, Leaving Crops to Rot” This sudden, unexplained exodus has […]

“The Current Iran War will Likely end soon, but the Arms Race will Heat Up”

“The Current Iran War will Likely end soon, but the Arms Race will Heat Up” Juan Cole, Ann Arbor (Informed Comment). The Al Jazeera bureau chief in Tehran, Abdul Qader Fayez, reports from “informed sources” in Tehran that Iran’s clerical Leader, Ali Khamenei, and his National Security Council have still not decided how to respond to the […]

May existing home sales show prices stabilizing, inventory continuing to increase towards its historical range

 – by New Deal democrat The first part of this week is all about more housing data. This morning started out with  existing home sales, which although they typically constitute about 90% of all sales are the least important for forecasting purposes, since the main thing that happens is only a change in ownership, and therefore they […]

What’s he hiding in there?

To follow up on my previous post; “WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Tesla told U.S. regulators that all of its answers to questions on the safety of its robotaxi deployment in Texas are confidential business information and should not be made public, according to a letter released Monday.” Because the safety of Tesla’s stock price will be endangered. […]