(This was first posted February 21, 2008.) Bribes, payola, favor of the physical kind? Forget-about it. Just put the right person in the appropriate agency, preferably a person from the line of business the agency is to regulate. But, for extra insurance over the long haul, with a little luck of timing you get to […]
Steve Hutkins of Save The Post Office critiques the cost-saving measures put into play to-date by PMG Louis DeJoy, the bypassing of the Postal Regulatory Commission which is supposed to review such plans, and the resulting unprecedented mail delays across the country. Steve proposes a plan to meet the Covid crisis impact on the Postal service […]
College educational attainment by age demographic There is no economic data today due to the Columbus Day observance. So let me drop this graph of a metric I have been trying to find, of college educational attainment by age demographic, that I finally came across a couple of days ago: It is commonplace that […]
Kip Sullivan and I have had a running dialogue over the last year or so. Kip has been writing for such sites as The Health Care Blog, other blogs and newspaper. I find his knowledge insightful as we discuss what we know and where we are going with healthcare. Today Kip is working on implementing […]
Steve Hutkins at Save the Post Office Another federal court has ruled against the Postal Service. The United States Postal Service is now 0 for 6. In the case of Richardson v Trump, Judge Emmet Sullivan has ordered a preliminary injunction putting limits on postal operations in the run-up to the election. (Sullivan had also issued a preliminary injunction […]
Voting in a Time of Covid: A Question about Judicial “Originalism” The originalist theory of legal interpretation holds that judges, in reviewing the implementation of a statute, should be guided by the “plain meaning” of its language at the time it was adopted. This is in opposition to the notion of a “living law”, whose […]
“The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, 1842 The red death had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal — the madness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding […]
Nine Supreme Court vacancies in place during election years in SCOTUS’s post – Civil War era. It is simple, Republicans as led by McConnell lied to the American people. McConnell would call out to Democrats stating “the American voters” want truthful politicians. Has McConnell been truthful to “the American People?” 2016: McConnell’s Lies: “I believe the overwhelming […]
The “Trump Effect” On Happiness In a column in yesterday’s Washington Post, Dana Milbank has written on “Trump has made our lives worse. Here’s the proof.” He labels this apparent outcome of the “Trump Effect.” Since 1972 the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago has annually studied the nation’s mood. They […]
What about all the forest fires in the West? The most proximate cause of these fires is high temperatures along with associated lightning and high winds; both of which, directly or indirectly, can easily ignite a fire in tinder dry forests. Beyond beyond being dry, many western forest are far from being healthy. There are […]