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

Working class

The war on the working class* continues unabatedBy Kathy G. Proving once again why the Wall Street Journal should be required reading for all good lefties, today the paper reports on yet another way corporate America has found to screw the wage slaves among us. As the Journal explains, companies are using our pension funds […]

Medicare Reform Working Group

The Century Foundation Medicare Reform Working Group I am delighted to announce that The Century Foundation has created a working group to look at Medicare Reform. I’ll be directing it. We’re going to do the work online, communicating with each other on a closed list-serve. In this way, we’ll be able to get a lot […]

Picture these flip flops

Hat tip to Robert’s Stochastic thoughts for this link to Steve Benen. The bet is on for 100 flip flops before election time. What is a flip flop versus reasoned change of viewpoint?

Following the paths for water

Aguanomic’s David Zetland is collecting great sources on the rights and economic of water. My time is restricted currently, but think it is worh passing on as it stands. TP1: Favoring Farmers This week, we have a few rants from an anonymous guest (The Teal Pimpernel?). Here’s the first: There is a water conservation bill […]

Behavior reveals…oil company priorities

Bloomberg reports: ExxonMobil bought back $29 billion of its own stock in 2006, $28 billion in 2007 and has already bought back $16 billion in the first half of 2008. Even so, it reports $39 billion in cash on hand and is all but certain to report more than $40billion in profit, along with $32 […]

Trade policies and the campaign

Hat tip to Economist’s View for this post from Vox EU: Obama, the optimist on trade, by Susan Ariel Aaronson, Vox EU: Around the world, the press has portrayed the 2008 US presidential election as a choice between freer trader John McCain and “protectionist” Barack Obama. That traditional paradigm has helped the media simplify the […]

In bad taste 2…

hat tip Old Vet McCain, who’s obsessed with skinny blond women, made a stupid ad equating Obama with a vacuous young blond Paris Hilton and also Britney Spears. Pure celebrity based on nothing but hype and looks. Wait a minute! Let’s talk about vacuous blond rich girls for just a minute, and who has them […]

Continuous loop of negotiations

by reader ilsm From the comments, CoRev states: “ILSM, breaking the rqmts [requirements] into bite sized chunks (design or parts of it) can work if the rqmts are reasonably well defined. Buying an entire Weps [weapon system], even with a fly-off, is/was ludicrous. Every engineering change and there will ALWAYS be many open/re-opens and re-re-opens […]

In bad taste….

Hat tip CoRev… ‘We, in Ireland, can’t figure out why people are even bothering to holdan election in the United States . On one side, you have a pants wearing lawyer, married to a lawyer whocant keep his pants on, who just lost a long and heated primary against alawyer who goes to the wrong […]