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

An interesting coincidence: Cruz beat Trump and Sanders beat Clinton in Wisconsin by identical percentages

Each won by 13.2%. ____ UPDATE: I posted his when 99% of the vote in each primary was counted.  Now, with 100% in both primaries counted, Cruz’s victory margin remains at 13.2%.  Sanders’s is 13.3%. Added 4/6 at 10:32 a.m.    

It’s official – Icelandic bankers have been jailed

If you’ve been following my posts over the last few years, you know that Iceland took the dramatic step of prosecuting top officers at the country’s big 3 banks, all of which were allowed to go bankrupt in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse. Unlike Ireland, it did not turn bank debt into government […]

More to the Story on Killing the VHA

run75441: Ater I posted my article on the VA, it received a comment from Suzanne Gordon who writes on healthcare and has covered VA healthcare at her blog and also at American Prospect; Unfriendly Fire Fall 2015. Unfriendly Fire discusses the VHA coming under severe criticism from Libertarian ideologues and conservative right wing politicians even […]

7 Million at Risk from Man-made Quakes

Interesting Vox article on natural and manmade earthquakes my fellow Vet and cohort in writing Mark Jamison sent me. This year for the first time ever the USGS is including a map of areas in the US which may be prone to human-induced earthquakes” in addition to areas which are prone to natural earthquakes. “By […]

“Post Post Work Post”

As one of those manufacturing people who improve throughput, I often read Sandwichman who writes for “Econospeak BlogSpot I hope you enjoy his analysis of robots replacing humans and the resulting availability of time off. Wait a minute, does a post work society giving time off really take place? “Automation may mean a post-work society […]

“The Battle for VA Healthcare and Its Funding”

VA healthcare has its faults; but, it still is one of the more successful examples of publicly funded healthcare even while hampered by a lack of funding to provide more capacity in strategic places for new Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and aging Vietnam veterans like myself. Libertarian Pete Hegseth, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq […]

Millennials like socialism — until they get jobs. Or until a pollster tells them that it would mean tax increases but doesn’t tell them, for example, that the tax increases would replace healthcare insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical expenses. And doesn’t tell them that “more government services” means something other than, say, trash collection twice a week instead of once a week.

Okay, so the title of a Washington Post op-ed piece today by research fellow and director of polling at the Cato Institute Emily Ekins is “Millennials like socialism — until they get jobs.”  She knows that this is do because a recent Reason-Rupe poll—that’s libertarian magazine Reason, and some polling organization they hired—found that: When […]

MI Pushing the 85th Percentile “Again”

Michigan has had an issue fixing its roads and for the last two years the Republican controlled Legislature and the Republican Governor have not been able to decide or agree on what the solution might be. I believe what has been decided was an increase in gas taxes, some money from the imaginary general fund […]

The ACTUAL Likely Reason That Clinton Won Ohio by 15 Points: Blue-Collar Whites Voted in Large Numbers for Kasich Against Trump. (This matters. Maybe a lot.)

Okay, so Paul Krugman blogged yesterday that the Clinton campaign’s numbers guru, Joel Benenson, claims that Clinton lopsidedly won the Ohio primary because: Ohioans took a hard look at Senator Sanders’ claims, and rejected them. Despite his attempt to portray Hillary as an ardent free­trader, Hillary voted against the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), […]