Brief Four minute read with graphs and tables. The Consumer Price(s) Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in April, after rising 0.9 percent in March. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported May 12, 2026. The biggies here? Energy rose 3.8 percent in April, accounting for over […]
– by New Deal democrat As almost universally anticpated, the April CPI continued to reflect the big increase in gas prices – although it didn’t pack quite the wallop that March did. Headline CPI increased 0.6%, following March’s +0.9%, causing the YoY% gain to increase to 3.8%. Meanwhile the core measure increased 0.4%, causing the YoY% […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
– 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 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 […]
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 […]
– 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 […]