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

April consumer prices: still an interplay of gas and house prices, with a side helping of motor vehicle insurance

 – by New Deal democrat First, a programming note: I’ll post about retail sales later today. Consumer inflation in April continued essentially to be an interplay between shelter and gas prices, with a side helping of auto insurance and repairs. During late 2022 and early 2023, shelter was still accelerating or steady at a high […]

BP Softens tone on 2030 oil output cut to reassure investors

by Ron Bousso Reuters A brief on what BP is doing. My guess is they are going to cut output to drive the market. It could be that other oil companies could fill the gap or move with BP. However, they prefer trump in office so making Biden look bad is a realistic plan for […]

April producer prices reflect some building pressure from a strong economy with full employment

 – by New Deal democrat Tomorrow and Thursday a plethora of data will be released, on consumer inflation and spending, production, housing, and jobless claims. In the meantime today we got a chance to look at upstream pressures on inflation. And those upstream pressures do seem to be building slightly, reflecting a strong economy with […]

Schools in One Virginia County to Reinstate Confederate Names

Schools in One Virginia County to Reinstate Confederate Names, The New York Times, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar substack SUMMARY: After a meeting that lasted for hours, the Shenandoah County school board voted early Friday morning to restore the names of three Confederate officers to schools in the district. With the vote, the district appears to be the first […]

Massive chain of crumbling safety-net hospitals described as a “Ponzi scheme

I was going to finish this up two days ago. Except I got sick and was sweating for two nights in a row. And slept most of the first day and some of today. I had been fighting this for a about 5 days and then it came om stronger. Today, I feel I am […]

Overall and core Consumer Price Index (CPI) both increased by 0.4 percent in March

It appears rent, transportation, and medical care services are the culprits holding up a decrease in inflation. Medicare does not surprise me at all. Harvard School of Health blames the rise of prices on administrative expenses, corporate greed and price gouging, and higher utilization of costly medical technology. What to Look for in the April […]

Generic Drugs Antitrust Case

Pharma companies providing pharmaceuticals exclusive to them have vast amounts of control in availability and or pricing. Either can result in increased costs to the patient. Economist Timothy Taylor reviews one particular instance with Teva Pharmaceuticals. Collaboration with other companies to control pricing appears to be Teva’s Director of Strategic Customer Marketing Nisha Patel’s strong […]

Mother’s Day actually started in the 1870s

by Professor Heather Cox-Richarson Letters from an American If you google the history of Mother’s Day, the internet will tell you that Mother’s Day began in 1908 when Anna Jarvis decided to honor her mother. But “Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the […]

Gerald “Digger” Moravek was a rancher, an early environmentalist, and a dog killer.  Just like Kristi Noem, but not.

In the summer of 1984, I lived on the ranch of Gerald “Digger” Moravek, just outside Sheridan, Wyoming.  Like many of the ranchers who banded together to establish the Powder River Basin Resource Council, where I was working, Digger was drawn to environmentalism partly for self-interested reasons:  in the early 1970s a coal company was […]

They are Anti-War, Stupid

Reuters says the students are protesting the war in Palestine.  The students say that they are protesting the war — the killing of innocents.  Still and yet, the U.S. media doesn’t get it — says that the protesters are pro-Palestian, or anti-Semitic.  Seems it is about the narrative. To be clear. Netanyahu and ultra-orthodox Jews […]