Wikipedia offers an excellent synopsis of Regulatory Capture. In her book, Media Capture, Anya Schiffrin does so for Media Capture. In 1971, soon-to-be Associate Justice Lewis Powell Jr., then a corporate lawyer, wrote a memorandum to his friend Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chair of the Education Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce titled Attack […]

June CPI report: bad, bad, bad, bad, bad  – by New Deal democrat In case for some reason you haven’t already heard, the inflation news for June was uniformly bad. Here is some of the carnage. For the month of June only:   overall inflation was up 1.3%, the highest monthly increase since 2005   […]

A well-deserved death for an ill-conceived plan for veterans. The 2018 VA MISSION Act was to help shape the future of veterans’ health care delivery by creating the Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission. The modernization as planned by Trump was to be accomplished by downsizing VA hospitals and clinics with the goal of privatizing […]

“Peatlands cover only a small fraction of the Earth’s surface (3%), yet store more than 15%–30% of terrestrial carbon (C) stocks” One of the terrible tipping points is oxidation of Peat due to warming (another is release of methane from melting tundra). But one key question is why didn’t the carbon in peat turn to […]

In a previous post, I pointed out that Jeffrey Tucker, the founder of the libertarian Brownstone Institute, has a personal history on race related issues that . . . raises some awkward questions.  I concluded as follows: I have no idea what the truth is here or what Tucker’s views on race are.  But the […]

by Barkley Rosser Just How Bad Is Biden’s Trip To Saudi Arabia?, Econospeak  Yes, I posted on this a while ago, but at that time it was a maybe. Now he is in the air on his way, although, of course, to Israel and the West Bank first, where I have no complaint or comment […]

Coronavirus dashboard for July 11: BA.4&5 now over 80% of cases without creating a new wave, as COVID heads toward endemicity The CDC’s variant proportions data for this past week is out, and it shows that combined BA.4&5 made up slightly over 80% of all infections. BA.5 was at 65%, and BA.4 at 16%: [Note: […]

Aggregate hours and payrolls of nonsupervisory workers and the onset of recessions by New Deal democrat An important reason I focus on whether or not the economy is heading into recession is that during recessions income and jobs both decline for the middle and working classes as a whole. In that regard, Jared Bernstein, a […]

If any more evidence is needed that the Democrats are, much, much more in step with the public on abortion than Republicans, two items.  First, more evidence that people have serious reservations about government meddling in the most personal of decisions: And this: House Republicans are weighing what kind of national-level abortion ban legislation to […]