Institute for New Economic Thinking Lance Taylor describes his thinking on the great divide.  Worth a look: President Trump, in his inaugural address and elsewhere, rightly says that over the decades since 1980 American household distributions of income and wealth became strikingly unequal. But if recent budget and legislative proposals from Trump and the House […]

Via Kevin MD Dr. Kenneth Lin writes another article on disappearing rural medical care.  this is part of the article… I recently attended a conference in Savannah, Georgia sponsored by the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research. Since I haven’t spent much time in Georgia outside of Savannah and Atlanta, the welcoming plenary on improving health […]

Via Journel of American Medical Association (JAMA) is an invitation us to keep looking at the plight of rural hospitals in light of decreasing rural population. Dr. Diana Mason writes: But other rural communities, home to nearly 20% of the US population, are not so fortunate. Since 2010, 78 of the more than 2150 rural nonspecialty […]

Video series for “Rethinking Investment Incentives” As regular readers will recall, I contributed to the Columbia Center for Sustainable Investment’s book, Rethinking Investment Incentives: Trends and Policy Options (Columbia University Press, 2016). Now, the editors have put together a series of video teasers for most of the individual chapters, all of which can be seen […]

From Kaiser Health News points to other general sources of lead than paint and water: The Environmental Defense Fund, in an analysis of 11 years of federal data, found detectable levels of lead in 20 percent of 2,164 baby food samples. The toxic metal was most commonly found in fruit juices such as grape and apple, […]

Via Naked Capitalism comes Brett Robertson’s Why Is PBS Airing Right-Wing-Sponsored School Privatization Propaganda? (Media Matters).  I like Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and sometimes Car Talk while driving to places, if they happen to be on. Otherwise I tend to avoid listening to Marketplace and the news segments. This has been true for me for a […]

The Hidden Cost of Privatization by Nina Shapiro at Institute for New Economic Thinking  is an excellent read. This conception of government, of course, is not new. “Small government” has been a hallmark of the Republican Party for decades, and the privatization of government properties and services has been increasing worldwide since the 1980s. In the […]

Is Trump’s Apprenticeship Program Like His Infrastructure Program? It looks like it might be in a crucial way.  Both involve lots of rhetoric about expanding programs that many support, apprenticeships and infrastructure.  However, on looking at them closer to the extent we can see anything specific aside from the rhetoric, it looks like they involve […]

Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts Trump says AHCA is “Mean” One source said Trump called the House bill “mean, mean, mean” and said, “We need to be more generous, more kind.” The other source said Trump used a vulgar phrase to describe the House bill and told the senators, “We need to be more generous.” AP […]

by Joseph Joyce Exiting the Planet The full impact of President Trump’s announcement that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate accord will not be fully realized for years, and indeed, decades to come. But the withdrawal is part of a series of disavowals of international agreements and commitments that were created after World […]