Tuesday, July 1, 2025
How COVID-19 Showed America’s Dependence on Blue-Collar Workers
The outbreak of “hero” talk is a long-overdue admission that blue-collar workers are the backbone of the US economy. Time to pay them more.
#DemExit Now: How the Democratic Party Cheated Bernie Sanders Out of the Nomination
How the Dems played dirty with Sanders.
2:00PM Water Cooler 4/17/2020
Today’s Water Cooler: Festival of Biden (strange inactivity, SuperPAC, Michelle Obama, VP horserace), Sirota on civility, vote by mail, ballot marking devices, Howie Hawkins, employment situation, state budgets, gold, Amazon, #COVID19 (epidemiology, asymptomatic tranmission), time
CalPERS Staff Seeks to Strip Board of Remaining Authority Even as Press Exposes Multi-Billion Cost of Lack of Supervision; Elected Board Members Thumb Nose at Public by Seeking to Be Paid for Doing Almost Nothing
CalPERS staff is up to more dirty tricks. Push back by e-mail in public comments. Bad press already has them on the back foot.
Taleb Questions CalPERS Ben Meng’s Competence and Honesty in Defending Missed $1 Billion Hedge Gain; Taleb Estimates CalPERS Net Loss on Meng’s “Alternative Mitigation” Over Two Years at $19 Billion
Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls out one of CalPERS CIO Ben Meng’s Big Lies, and unearths an even bigger one.
A Payments Holiday is More Realistic Than You Think
It may be simpler to enact a payments holiday than to try to get money to the hands of individuals who desperately need it.
Is There Any Better Time Than Now For a General Strike?
May Day is around the corner. It seems a fitting time for workers to demand better via a general strike.
2:00PM Water Cooler 4/16/2020
Today’s Water Cooler: Biden administration personnel, Biden VP, Biden and The Zuckerberg, Biden and AOC, “essential workers,” Hofstadter, bourgeois riots, employment situation, manufacturing, California groundwater, Carnival, the corporate super-spreader, hospital staff cuts, apples, LSD
DemocracyWatch: Global Pandemic Power Grabs
Yet another pandemic downside….
Lockdown Rebelliousness: Denying that Coronavirus Is in Charge
The supposed irresistable force of the economy is losing out to the immovable object of the coronavirus.
Taleb: The Only Man Who Has A Clue
A recap of what Taleb and his fellow complex systems analysts have been saying about coronavirus. Not pretty.
The New Fault Lines in a Post-Globalized World
Coronavirus is smashing up the economic and political order. What sort of world comes next?
