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

ACA Marketplace Healthcare Plan Renewals

ACA Marketplace Reflections on Retention and Year-round Enrollment – by Andrew Sprung xpostfactoid Writing about the ACA marketplace at this point has an elegiac feel (as does writing about almost any not-depraved or degraded aspect of American life). As of 2026, coverage is likely to be far less affordable, out of pocket costs will rise […]

New Administration and the return to an Inflationary Era

 – by New Deal democrat I don’t normally discuss movements in the stock and bond markets, but occasionally there are important paradigm shifts that can tell us a lot about the economy, and the last few months have been one of those times. The Federal Reserve began to cut interest rates on September 18th. What […]

Grocery Stores in Low Income Areas and Small Communities

Somewhere in all of this, I one time wrote about the accessibility of groceries in low-income neighborhoods. It mostly does not exist and people living in these deserts are more into eating McDonalds or other fast foods. I believe as you read further, you will find the same circumstance driving many smaller stores out of […]

COVID five years in

The COVID pandemic in the US began five years ago. It wasn’t declared a pandemic then, but in retrospect, that’s when it began. My university has an NIH-designated vaccine testing and evaluation unit. In late January 2020, I attended a lecture by the clinical director about the recently named SARS-CoV-2. That was the first time […]

The economic reasons why the Democrats lost in 2024

 – by New Deal democrat There is no significant economic news until Thursday. In the meantime, today and tomorrow let me discuss a couple of issues at the intersection of economics and politics. The 2024 Presidential election was one of the closest popular vote margin for the winning candidate, at 1.5%, since Richard Nixon’s 0.7% […]

The Vladimir Putin national security access exemption

The White House Counsel to provide the White House Security Office and Acting Chief Security Officer with a list of personnel that are hereby immediately granted interim Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearances for a period not to exceed six months and that these individuals shall be immediately granted access to the facilities and […]

California is an economic and technological powerhouse

Or who is the biggest moocher of Federal funding? Mike Johnson wishes to Penalize California. According to Louisiana’s Mike Johnson, California should be penalized. “Mike Johnson told CNN’s Manu Raju that there should be “conditions” on the proposed federal aid to California in the wake of the deadly wildfires in Los Angeles County. It appears to us […]