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

It’s not as bad as they say, then again, maybe it’s worse. Monitoring the Mail.

Guest Post by Mark Jamison, retired Postmaster Webster, N.C. It’s been said that “life imitates art” but the idea of government spying on its citizens didn’t originate with George Orwell and his version of “Big Brother”. The United States has a long history of spying on its citizens. The revelations of the U.S. Senate Select […]

Election Predictions

Happy Election Day! Update: To check live results for the Senate Race as each state closes, go here; Huff X Pollster; Election 2014 For weeks now, I have been following Sam Wang’s election notes on the Princeton Election Consortium blog leading up to today’s election. I hope he is wrong; but, it “appears” the best […]

By Default or Design: The Demise of the Postal Service

Guest Post by Mark Jamison, retired Postmaster Webster, N.C. This post originally appeared on Save The Post Office Blog. This is Part 2 of three posts and following Invisible Hands: The Businessman’s Campaign to Dismantle the Post Office. Default.  It’s an ugly and dangerous word.  It gives the impression that the individual or enterprise attached […]

How Does the World’s Leading Economy and the Rest of the World Prepare for Disease Outbreaks, Epidemics, and Pandemics?

The CDC “As demonstrated in the PHEP funding chart above, CDC continues to work with reduced financial resources, which similarly affects state, local, and insular area public health departments. These and other funding decreases have resulted in more than 45,700 job losses at state and local health departments since 2008. These losses make it difficult […]

Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Campaign to Dismantle the Post Office

Guest Post by Steve Hutkins a literature professor who teaches “place studies” at the Gallatin School of New York University. This is Part 1 in a series of 3 articles as written by Steve Hutkins in 2012. These articles originally appeared on the “Save The Post Office Blog”. Steve lives in a small town in […]

Some things fit and some things don’t; but of the things that don’t, maybe I understand them better*

Guest Post by Mark Jamison, retired Postmaster Webster, N.C. This post originally appeared at Daily Yonder Blog, entitled Speak Your Piece: Pray in Closet, Not Public Town of Greece v. Galloway SCOTUS in a 5-4 decision held the town of Greece’s practice of opening its town board meetings with a prayer offered by members of […]

Rolling Jubilee: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?

authored by Alan Collinge of the Student Loan Justice Organization, a grass roots group seeking the swift return of standard bankruptcy protections and other consumer protections to all student loans in the U.S. “We started by going after Sallie Mae debt because Sallie Mae is for my generation sort of the Voldemort, this cosmic level […]