Shocked by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s defeat in last week’s Virginia primary, many in the media have decided that this “earthquake” has re-shaped the political landscape. Immigration reform is dead, they say, and tea party radicals are far stronger than many suspected. Meanwhile, the alarmists warn, political polarization has divided the country, poisoning our […]

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pacts, the increased desire to ‘invert’ ownership and headquarters by ‘American’ companies, TISA (published only by Wikileaks?), points us to a world managed by what organizations? Via Alternet comes a note in TISA, a trade agreement that tries to frame itself in the private/government rhetoric, but we need to […]

From the BBC comes a note on a crowd control drone:      South Africa-based Desert Wolf told the BBC it had secured the sale of 25 units to a mining company after showing off the tech at a trade show. It is marketing the device as a “riot control copter” that can tackle crowds […]

Today, “Economist’s View showcased Paul Krugman’s latest NYT article“Veterans and Zombies”. Paul discusses how the hyped-up VA issues are being used as an example of under performing government healthcare to emphasize how bad the much larger PPACA healthcare reform could be if allowed to proceed. Of course this is not true; but both Mark and […]

Anecdotal evidence, the basis of so much journalism prior to the rise of the data movement and still, to my mind, over-relied upon — is just that: anecdotal. Roughly 65,000 people voted in the Cantor-Brat primary; Brat won by more than 7,200 votes. Assuming that what a non-scientific sample  of 1, 10 or even 100 […]

Sandwichman at Econospeak points us to common threads in a blast from the past: Economic science: “this magazine of untruth” The complaint one makes against that anti-social jargon, which so easily passes for economic science, is that it is in ludicrous opposition to the common observation of facts. Political economy professes to be a science […]

Simon-Wren Lewis at Mainly Macro is on target with the term ‘privatization’ as a way to ‘save’ money and add ‘efficiency’.  Of course no slogan making the claim can begin with ‘it depends…’: Privatisation and government debt Possibly the worst argument for privatizing part of the public sector is a supposed ‘need’ to reduce public […]

If you have been watching the ongoing saga unfolding in Wisconsin on Governor Scott Walker and his recall election and election shenanigans, it probably comes as no surprise there was fire where there was smoke. “Prosecutors allege Gov. Scott Walker was at the center of an effort to illegally coordinate fund” raising among conservative groups […]

Warming slowdown? WHAT warming slowdown? A result of discussions at: Part one was mentioned at Angry Bear a few weeks ago. Here is Azimuth…part 2