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

The Trump/Musk/RFK Jr Administration is trying to kill us

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has paused a multimillion-dollar contract from the Biden administration to create a new COVID-19 vaccine; • US health officials are reevaluating a $590 million contract for bird flu shots that the Biden administration awarded to Moderna; • A meeting of a committee that advises the FDA on vaccine policy has […]

Viruses don’t care about your beliefs

“As the measles outbreak in Texas keeps spreading, parents who previously chose not to vaccinate their children are now lining up to get their kids the shots needed to protect them from the serious illness. “People are more and more nervous” as they watch the highly contagious virus spread in their communities, mostly among children, […]

Unions, Labor, and Work Stoppages

As the EPI article says decades of federal policy and court decisions have placed limit on Labor’s to strike as allowed under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Evolving over the years, millions of workers have been excluded from the NLRA right to strike. As you can see on the graph below the numbers of […]

Techno-Stalinism and the death of democracy

A former mentor once explained to me why America would be better off if scientists ran the country. While technocracy isn’t inherently anti-democratic—America could simply elect scientists and engineers—the notion smacks of elitism. Of course, this country was founded on the idea of elitism. Only property-owning White men could vote. The president was appointed by […]

Planned Budget Cuts and Impact

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen review Trumps budget cuts. The implication here is it is near impossible to achieve the dramatic cuts without imposing severe penalties on the US Citizenry, The attempt is to balance the budget so as intakes equal outtakes of funds. Except Trump does not want to fix his 2017 tax break. […]

Reasons for Taking a New Job

When I started out. it was the money. Kind of hard to buy a house and have kids if together you are pulling in $24,000/year. Then when the family starts, one of us will not be working (that was the plan). Get the first job, change jobs at two years, and work your way up […]

Unwelcome news for homebuyers and the CPI, as repeat home sales prices continue re-acceleration in December

– by New Deal democrat There was unwelcome news in this morning’s repeat home sales reports from the FHFA and Case-Shiller. On a seasonally adjusted basis, in the three-month average through December, according to the Case-Shiller national index (light blue in the graphs below) prices rose 0.5%, and the somewhat more leading FHFA purchase only index (dark […]

DOGE is shooting blanks

This appears to be a new and unfamiliar use of the word “efficiency”: “The Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts that it terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” shows that more than one-third of the […]

Percentage of Public School Funding Coming from the Feds

The question? How much Federal Public School Funding comes from the Feds? The answer is here and you have to read it for yourself. Not a lot of reading to stymie you. Not terribly difficult. Not even 30 minutes of reading. The first question that comes to my mind? What would happen to schools if […]