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

Latest News on my Healthcare Radar – Out of Network Costs

CMS bans Surprise Billing The issues here were medical services practitioners not being on hospital staff. Practitioners not subject to hospital billing practices and bargaining contracts with Healthcare insurance were billing at their rates to recover what they deem to be reasonable. In the end, the patient pays whatever can be worked out. Radiology and […]

More Random News Events of the Week

“A Review of “The American War in Afghanistan,” Carter Malkasian, Foreign Affairs In 2008, I interviewed the United Kingdom’s then outgoing military commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, in a dusty firebase in Helmand Province, where international troops had been battling the Taliban on a daily basis for territory that kept slipping away. Carleton-Smith stated […]

“Being Woke or Something Else?”

General Milley during the hearing: “I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So what is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country from which we are here to defend?” “I personally find it offensive we are accusing the United States military, our […]

Classical liberalism and the politics of white grievance

It is an unfortunate fact that many think tanks funded by conservative plutocrats and nominally devoted to spreading free-market ideas actively foster the politics of white grievance.  I believe the evidence for this claim is quite strong, but it is not always immediately obvious that this is happening.  Classical liberals and libertarians generally do not […]

Coronavirus dashboard for June 28: comparisons with one year ago as “delta” spreads

Coronavirus dashboard for June 28: comparisons with one year ago as “delta” spreads Let’s begin this installment with a look at vaccinations by county from a different source that a reader pointed me to last week, COVIDactnow:  The urban/rural and Red State/Blue State divides are pretty obvious. Conor Kelly (whose work I was highlighting one year ago) also […]

Rising Oil and Natural Gas prices at 32 month and at 29 month highs

RJS at Marketwatch 666 reviews oil and natural gas pricing, June 28, 2021 Oil Pricing Oil prices set a new 32 month high for a fifth consecutive week, as negotiations to lift Iranian sanctions broke off and US crude supplies fell more than was expected for a fifth straight week. After rising 1% to $71.64 […]

Oedipus Marx and the Chimera of Socially Necessary Labour Time

Oedipus Marx and the Chimera of Socially Necessary Labour Time Karl Marx: “Pamphlet No. 1 ends with the statement: ‘Wealth is nothing but disposable time’” No, it doesn’t.  The pamphlet Marx cited was The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties. The phrase, “wealth . . . is disposable time, and nothing more,” appeared on page 5 […]

Threatened

Living the Big Lie In the more insular areas of the red states, of all the states, some have been saying, thinking, and believing like Marjorie Taylor Greene since forever. In these areas, this narrative of Marjorie’s wasn’t unusual to the local ear; neither was what Trump was saying. Trump’s election in 2016, accorded the […]

May’s Personal Income Down 2.0%, Spending Unchanged

2 Months PCE Would Add 7.36 Percentage Points to Q2 GDP Angry Bear Commenter RJS and Marketwatch 666 blogger computes the impact of real PCE from this report on GDP and explains his math. The May report Personal Income and Outlays from the Bureau of Economic Analysis gives us nearly half the data that will go […]