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

Academic tenure

Academic tenure is a commitment by a college or university to award permanent employment status. Most faculty contracts stipulate that tenure can only be removed for cause or for financial exigency. In the last year of my postdoctoral fellowship, I applied for tenure-track positions at various universities around the US. Tenure-track means that the university […]

Trump the Chump

It’s time to shit-talk the president. Congressional Democrats have had difficulty figuring out how to respond to Trump’s lawlessness, mendacity, stupidity, and cruelty.  The democratic base wants them to talk tough, but the hard reality is that they have almost no formal power and lack a party leader.  As a result, Trump has been left […]

The Callais decision and the coming election

The Supreme Court’s recent decision to gut the Voting Rights Act is a disgrace. I will return to the decision and how Democrats should confront the court in future posts. Here I want to make one point I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere. By allowing partisan gerrymandering and encouraging states to redraw majority-minority districts, the court […]

Americans Voting in 2024

This is one of those “You Wonder Why” commentaries, we got what we got in the presidency. There is a lot which can be said other than this piece and the numbers of voters. I have posted on the numbers who voted in 2024 in comparison to 2020. This is another look at them. The […]

Existing home sales, prices, and inventory remain rangebound

 – by New Deal democrat Although they constitute about 90% of all housing sales, I don’t pay too much attention to existing sales because they are not nearly so important as new home sales, since the latter involve much more economic activity in the building process, plus more landscaping and furnishings. As I’ll show below, what […]

HPV vaccination

HPV infection accounts for 99% of cervical cancers. There’s a vaccine against HPV. Back when we still lived in Missouri, we had our teenage daughter vaccinated against HPV. Glad to see that in our adopted state of Rhode Island, 95% of adolescents got at least one dose of the HPV vaccine. Why would any parent […]

Constitutionally

Then, it was a new nation, a revolutionarily new kind of nation, in the late 18th century.  People rode on horseback, in buggies, wagons, stagecoaches, and on shanksmare; sailed, rowed, and poled the water(s); and communicated via letters carried on these means of transportation.  A new nation formed up of 13 (newly wed) former colonies […]

New Deal Democrats Weekly Indicators Summation May 4- 8

 – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. Surprisingly, most of the data is almost relentlessly positive. In particular, those things most tied up with AI — corporate profits, stock prices, and downstream consumer spending — are particularly strong. Also, American energy companies are making windfall profits from the closure of […]

Newscast Discussing Trump and Iran

Kerry told MS NOW’s Jen Psaki on “The Briefing” that the president’s Truth Social posts –– an expletive-laden post on Sunday and a Tuesday threat that Iran’s “whole civilization will die” –– left him “as shocked as I’ve been by anything that I have seen or read by this administration, in the first administration and now in the second.” […]

Healthcare Insurance Costs

Healthcare Insurance for a company is Overhead cost. Overhead costs are expenses supporting a business. They are not directly associated with labor input, to a product, or to a service you sell. I would not blame Labor for the rising role of healthcare costs in Overhead. This is beyond the cost of Labor input. It […]