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

April 14, 2023, Letters from an American . . . the Fentanyl Epidemic

The last few days, I have been pointing to the Opioid epidemic which did not just start with Fentanyl. It has been ongoing before the introduction of Qxycontin by the Sadler’s Purdue Pharmaceuticals. In 1996. It was advertised by Purdue as a nonaddictive drug by misquoting Doctors Jane Porter and Herschel Jick’s letter to NEJM […]

The Economic Toll of the Opioid Crisis Reached Nearly $1.5 Trillion in 2020

The other day I posted some charts covering drug addiction. in the US. The first Bar Chart below matches up with Figure 3 in that post “Drug Overdose Death Rates in the US,” Angry Bear. Today’s post as taken from the Senate Joint Economic Committee fleshes out the numbers cited there and also here in […]

Ethical Behavior, Politics, and SCOTUS

It was, maybe, the late eighties and I was at Oscar Mayer buying packaging for products such as Lunchables, hot dogs, bacon, etc. and the labels. This buy included the graphics. Management thought they were overwhelming me. Indeed, I was thriving having commandeered on OM Wiener mo-jet to visit suppliers in Minnesota and Massachusetts. I […]

Privatized Medicaid and MinnesotaCare

Kip Sullivan has been comparing Fee for Service Medicare to Medicare Advantage and Commercial Healthcare Insurance at length calling out the failures of the latter. The results of such comparisons show FFS Medicare is far less costly in providing similar and better healthcare. Expanding Medicare to include all constituents as it is or in a […]

Even with today’s slowdown, profit growth remains a big driver of inflation

This is a brief and targeted commentary by EPI’s Josh Bivens to which I have added input. The Fed has been flailing away at the economy in the belief Labor is the issue. Josh contends, product or profit markups have been a major issue. He does provide a foundation for his posit. I look to […]

Drug Overdose Death Rates in the US

This post is more of a copy and paste. If you read the sections and then the original piece, you will see I have changed some of the wording to accommodate the post itself. For example, the charts appear to the right of the wording rather than above. For the longest time, I could not […]

Considering Environmental Topics Impacting Us Daily

I split these topics out from my other groupings of things found in my In-Box. I thought I would give it its own post as it considers environmental topics to include poverty, housing, nature, recycling, and business. All of which have an impact on the world we live in today. What is there is how […]

April 8, 1865, U.S. Grant Having a Hard Night

April 8, 1865, Letters from an American, Prof. Heather Cox-Richardson On April 8, 1865, General Ulysses S. Grant was having a hard night.  His army had been harrying Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s for days, and Grant knew it was only a question of time before Lee had to surrender. The people in the Virginia […]