50% of Congress Are Millionaires “The nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics reports at least 268 of the 534 lawmakers were worth an average of $1 million in 2012. These millionaires are the people debating issues like unemployment benefits, food stamps and the minimum wage, which affect people with far fewer resources — it’s no wonder […]
Many of us have talked about bending the healthcare cost curve by changing the services for fee healthcare cost model to a model of better outcomes for those fees. This is precisely what the PPACA does. Phillip Longman based his book “Best Care Anywhere” on how the VA brought about such a change in the […]
The 1% are Still Stealing Our Homes Hat Tip Crooks and Liars Diane Sweet Following the bank’s instructions, Laura and her partner missed three months of their mortgage payments to qualify for a loan modification. But instead of working with the family, Bank of America put the home in foreclosure, using the highly controversial process […]
From the Onion News Network comes this little gem: Just sayin.
Senator Elizabeth Warren introduces bill to stop credit checks in job application process “A bad credit rating is far more often the result of unexpected medical costs, unemployment, economic downturns, or other bad breaks than it is a reflection on an individual’s character or abilities,” Senator Warren said. “Families have not fully recovered from the […]
Trans Pacific Partnership is Not Especially Important Paul Krugman argues that the Trans Pacific Partnership is no big deal: I’ve been getting a fair bit of correspondence wondering why I haven’t written about the negotiations for a Trans Pacific Partnership… The answer is that I’ve been having a hard time figuring out why this deal […]
Brendan Nyhan at Columbia Journalism Review reminds us to be careful about debating budget priorities: How should the United States choose among the difficult tradeoffs it faces in setting the federal budget? There’s no one correct answer, but you wouldn’t know it from coverage of the budget deal between Senator Patty Murray and Rep. Paul […]
Via Alternet comes this reminder: News media should illuminate conflicts of interest, not embody them. But the owner of the Washington Post is now doing big business with the Central Intelligence Agency, while readers of the newspaper’s CIA coverage are left in the dark. The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO […]
Lifted from an e-mail from reader Jack (http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2013/12/20391.html#comments): (attribution corrected…irony comes to mind) Compare Fujita’s conclusion from the Fed paper, here http://philadelphiafed.org/research-and-data/publications/research-rap/2013/on-the-causes-of-declines-in-the-labor-force-participation-rate.pdf#page=7, with da Costa’s description in the WSJ. da Costa, “Philly Fed economist Shigeru Fujita argues that the shrinking of the U.S. workforce over the past year and half was “entirely due to retirement” […]
Emerging Strategy for the DEMS; Karoli at Crooks and Liars, Dems Strategy on Extending Unemployment Insurance Dems will leverage their votes to pass the Farm Bill for an extension of Unemployment . “Now that Congress is set to leave town even as unemployment benefits for 1.3 million Americans are set to expire just after Christmas, […]