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

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 […]

What are people — and the Post Office — for?

Guest Post by Mark Jamison retired Postmaster Webster, N.C. It’s likely that I will be the last postmaster to serve the town of Webster, North Carolina. The first postmaster, Allen Fisher, began his term in 1857, shortly after Jackson County was founded and Webster became the county seat. The names of the postmasters that follow […]

Wisconsin’s Utilities War on Energy Efficient Customers

Having raised a family in Mad City, Wisconsin (a place former governor Dreyfuss called “77 square miles surrounded by reality” and others calling it the Left Coast of Wisconsin, I found the state to be open to new ideas and more so than what is found in other states. Of course things have changed with […]

Finding Themselves On Third Base and Thinking They Hit a Triple

The White American Dream Game Just listening to the level of noise coming from some posters complaining about low income workers, how they caused their own predicament, and this is why they are unable to move upwards on the ladder of mobility. Low income and unskilled workers do not work hard enough, they did not […]

Full D.C. Circuit Court Will Rule on PPACA Subsidies

King v. Burwell [Cert] and Halbig v. Burwell) arrived at the DC COA in hopes of defunding (Ted Cruz’s top priority dream) the PPACA. Initially, a 3 judge panel ruled 2-1 striking down the funding of the PPACA based upon an earlier IRS interpretation of PPACA Section 1311 stating “Exchanges established by States.” Section 36B […]