It’s like a scene out of high school, in which the slackers seek to sabotage the nerds because the class is graded on a curve, and the nerds’ success imperils the slackers “B.” But it’s playing out in international affairs instead, as the U.S. has put Germany on its new “unfair trading partners” list. Why? Because Germany dares to be fiscally responsible. As described by Deutsche Welle (but curiously, of much less interest to U.S. media; this cbsnews.com article was... Read more
A. More than we care about breast cancer — at least, based on causes of death data. The CDC put out a Data Brief recently on trends in suicides over the last 15 years which is unsettling, and worrisome. I’m not going to try to get into any in-depth discussion of causes, but the key item is this: the death rate by suicide has climbed 24% since 1999. The rate for women climbed by 45%, from 4 per hundred thousand to 5.8... Read more
So this is what happens when you work at home, and have half-an-eyeball on twitter during the day: the clock strikes 3:00, and you turn on the news to see what the Cruz announcement is all about. (OK, actually, I hardly ever do this.) Elections are about choices. . . the Republican party faces a choice today. . . . united behind a positive, forward looking campaign based on real policy solutions. The American people deserve a real choice in... Read more
Listening to Trump speaking right now – how depressing! Winning 5 states, by substantial margins. Trump moaning that he’s unfairly not being considered the presumptive nominee. Asserting that he’s going to do great in Indiana because (a) Bobby Knight has endorsed him, and (b) Indiana is the location from which Carrier is moving jobs to Mexico. And he repeats his same lines: “we’ll build the wall, we’ll win against Hillary, we’ll bring jobs back to the U.S.” He’s got a... Read more
where the Elementary School District 15 School Board has, as far as I, or pretty much any observer, can tell, given away the farm in its negotiations with the teachers’ union. The School Board has promised raises of 2.5% for the first four years of the contract, and 4% for the last six years, and, yes, that means it’s a 10 year contract, which is unheard of for all the obvious reasons — the fact that so many factors... Read more
That’s the reason, or has, at any rate, always been offered as the reason, why we have an earning cap on Social Security pay — so that Americans can know that these are earned benefits, not a welfare check out of the pockets of the wealthy, and can feel a sense of dignity when they collect their check, and will confidently defend the program as “earned benefits” from those who would wish to dismantle it. It’s been that way from... Read more
On Fridays, my middle son has a karate class just after dinner, and it’s just a short drive from the supermarket, so it’s convenient to stop there and get some grocery-shopping done during the class. Most of the time I can finish and be back more-or-less on time; last night it took a bit longer, in part because a buy-one, get-one-free sale wasn’t ringing up that way (clearance items were supposed to have been excluded, but it didn’t say so... Read more
So having given a more-or-less straight summary of $2 a Day in my prior post, here are my observations: Edin & Shaeffer start off with “$2/day poverty has doubled since welfare reform” but other than that, the book is pretty void of statistics. What were the baseline numbers? When they say that virtually no one gets TANF these days, and the states use their block grants for other purposes, it really requires some hard data. They also breezily say, offhand, that... Read more
This book is not a polemic. It largely busies itself with simply explaining the lives of those in deep, deep poverty, both in general and by means of a small number of case studies, with some context to begin with and prescriptions at the end. The book doesn’t assign villians, or launch into partisan rants, and it doesn’t portray the people it follows as either paragons of virtue or deserving of their fate. And the name of the first co-author... Read more
Look, we all get it: an individual who has transitioned is in a position where you can’t just demand they use the locker rooms corresponding to their sex at birth. But at the same time, well, it’s driving me batty when people treat this as only an issue of bathrooms, and something to get past just by not being prudish. So here are a dozen scenarios. Which of these individuals would you feel comfortable using the locker room at a... Read more
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