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

Trump owned by Bush judge

U.S. District Judge John Bates, appointed by G.W. Bush, awarded summary judgment to Jenner & Block, finding President Trump’s executive order against it unlawful, null and void: “This case arises from one of a series of executive orders targeting law firms that, in one way or another, did not bow to the current presidential administration’s […]

Pushing the “Big Beautiful Bill” . . .

Getty’s Kevin Dietech snapped this picture of Republican Majority Leader Mike Johnson peering over his shoulder as he enters a meeting. Or what looks like a meeting. One of several authors writes it is a House Rules Committee Meeting. And probably about Trumps “Big Beautiful Bill.” “The Devastating Harms of House Republicans’ Big, ‘Beautiful’ Bill […]

RFK Jr. is wasting your tax dollars

Remember when RFK Jr. promised to have an answer to the cause of autism by September 2025? He’s already walking that back: “We will have some studies completed by September, and those studies will mainly be replication studies of studies that have already been done. We’re also deploying new teams of scientists, 15 groups of […]

Selling Out America

Selling Out America, Jack Lessenberry Pundit I would follow while living in Michigan. It has been fun reading him then. Now Jack has his own site to which I subscribe. He puts some excellent commentary up. If you get a chance you may wish to follow him from time to time. ~~~~~~~ Anyone who thinks […]

The Humpty-Dumpty SCOTUS

In Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass,” Humpty-Dumpty says, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Ever since Marbury v Madison, the Supreme Court has used similar logic with the Constitution. Now the Roberts SCOTUS has used this superpower to discover that the Constitution […]

America is not healthy

Between 2022 and 2023, there were 1.5 million excess deaths in the US. These are people who would be alive if the US mortality rate were comparable to other industrialized nations. “The authors agree that further research is needed to fully understand the driving factors behind excess mortality, but suggest looking to other nations for […]

SCOTUS killed the civil service

In its decision in Trump et al. v Wilcox et al., the six right-wing extremists on the Roberts SCOTUS stripped independent federal agencies of their independence. In principle, the next president could restore independence to these agencies, but from now on, such decisions are tenuous at best: “With unitary executive theory, Congress cannot write robust […]

What you need to share about the “one big beautiful” ugly horrible bill

I subscribe to Robert Reich’s site also. The old economist as he calls himself asks that subscribers publish this particular commentary of Roberts, He is attempting to publish more information above Trumps tax cut bill. I can vouch for question 1 as I posted on how a cut in Medicare could happen. Robert is claiming […]

The Bond Market is Not Amused: on the importance of Moody’s debt downgrade and the GOP budget bill

 – by New Deal democrat Today let me address the GOP bust-out budget bill, and how that plays into Moody’s downgrade of US debt last week. And the bottom line is that, it is bad. The rubber is starting to hit the road. Let me start out with the below graph from the CBO of the […]

Cuts to Medicaid and maybe Medicare

Briefly, a fast read . . . Trumps extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is a $3.8 trillion extension of it which will mostly benefit the wealthy and corporations. Professor Heather at “Letters from an American” (to which I subscribe) had this to say yesterday about the extension current being passed […]