Where we are in the Conversation VBP: I had stopped the dialogue on Kip Sullivan’s paper Medicare’s “Value-Based Payment (VBP)” programs are Failing on page 3 of 12 pages so as to detail it as much as possible and breaking this portion out for readers. It can be reviewed here. This part of Kip’s paper […]
‘Brutus,’ the anti-Federalist to presciently foresaw the Imperial Supreme Court As you may recall, for the past several years I have done a great deal of historical reading about Republics; how they were structured, what were their strengths and weaknesses, whether they were able to last a long time, and whether they were consistent […]
Infrastructure week: organs of the human brain, created by the human hand Who owns general social knowledge? Who owns the general intellect? Alf Hornborg pointed out that without the fuel to run it, a tractor is simply a piece of sculpture. It is not even a sculpture, though, if there is no one to design it […]
Farmer and Economist Michael Smith In this AgDaily piece, they do a great job of outlining the history of agriculture and sort of where it is headed, pretty much the same as it always has been, with a few caveats. Over time it has gotten much harder and now even more so with equipment prices […]
Sesame Street’s Big Bird Gets a Covid Vaccination After Sesame Street’s Big Bird tweeted that he received the COVID-19 vaccine, Sen. Ted Cruz and other right-wing media figures criticized the character for promoting “propaganda” to children. Sesame Street launched a promotional campaign during the past week after the COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for ages 5-11, […]
Anti-Racism and Democracy in Our Schools It’s generally conceded that Terry McAuliffe’s statement “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” was a big blunder that contributed to his defeat last week. The context was a debate with his Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin, who had used his party’s playbook on Critical […]
Appears that Parents’ Rights is the Republican Party’s latest wedge issue. My how they do love wedge issues. And, this one goes so well with their States Rights. Lot in common, the two. States’ Rights allowed a state to keep doing the same old. Parents’ Rights give parents the right to appropriate their child’s life. […]
Dan Little has a post up at Understanding Society on what authoritarianism might look like in the United States. The whole thing is well worth reading, but here is one part: This seems about right, though of course speculative, but I have doubts about the big business piece. Yes, some business interests will be close […]
If you will What if Jimmy Carter had been reelected in 1980; Walter Mondale had been elected in 1984 and reelected in 1988; and, Al Gore elected in 2000 and reelected in 2004? We would be at least twenty years ahead of where we are now in re Climate Change. Central America would not be […]
Political declaration of independence (reprise), Infidel753, Blogger and Commenter I know Infidel from Crooks and Liars where he would moderate Mike’s Blog Round Up and feature Angry Bear from time to time. Infidel writes some pretty darn good posts on his own site of the same name. This particular post is about the Virginia election […]