Retail sales disappoint — but don’t hyperventilate about it There certainly is a lot of information to unpack from this morning’s retail sales and inflation reports, and what they mean for wages and jobs. I’ll address them in separate posts. First, retail sales. They certainly were a disappointment, coming in at -0.3% nominally and -0.2% […]
Retail sales disappoint — but don’t hyperventilate about it
Trump says AHCA is “Mean”
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 […]
Cultural Appropriation
From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Indigenous advocates from around the world are calling on a UN committee to make appropriating Indigenous cultures illegal — and to do it quickly. Delegates from 189 countries, including Canada, are in Geneva this week as part of a specialized international committee within the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a […]
Exiting the Planet
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 […]
Backstepping
No, not the Control Theory version of Backstepping developed around 1990 by Petar V. Kokotovic. In the Marine Corp there was a Back Stepping cadence. The entire squad or platoon would move in 15 inch steps backwards after coming to a complete halt. It appears DOE Secretary has started to backstep on her comments on […]
Open thread June 13, 2017
Kansas Republicans abandon Brownback; raise taxes over his veto
Kansas Republicans abandon Brownback; raise taxes over his veto Remember Kansas’s great tax-cutting experiment under Governor Sam Brownback? (Me, sarcastic?) As always in Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore La-La Land, cutting taxes leads to economic nirvana. Except when it doesn’t, and it didn’t in Kansas. I recently wrote about the idiocy of Investor Business Daily‘s […]
“Flat Earthers”
President Trump has proposed budget cuts to programs and the departments running them. Amongst those departments impacted by Trump’s proposals is the Department of Education and it’s Office of Civil Rights. “ The DOE Department of Civil Rights function is to investigate discrimination complaints in school districts across the nation and create standards for responding […]
Boring Comment on Kabaservice
Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts: Boring Comment on Kabaservice Have I come up with a title less attractive than “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative” ? I certainly don’t expect anyone to read this post. Also I advixe against reading it — it is a waste of time. I am commenting on this NYT op-ed “The Great Performance […]