Monday, July 27, 2026

Big Oil Taking $1.9 Billion in CARES Act Tax Breaks Aimed at Helping Small Businesses in ‘Stealth Bailout’: Report

$1.9 billion in CARES Act tax breaks intended to allow small businesses to keep people employed are instead being funnelled to fossil fuel executives.

Links 5/16/2020

Because Culture Matters, There Is No One-Size-Fits-All Exit Strategy from Covid-19 Lockdowns

Quelle surprise! Local norms play a meaningful role in Covid-19 transmission, which has implications for how to end lockdowns.

Coronavirus Dashboard: Updating the State Petri Dishes of Democracy

Parsing some US coronavirus data.

2:00PM Water Cooler 5/15/2020

Today’s Water Cooler:

Contact Tracing Via Old Shoe-Leather Epidemiology While Spurning the Techno-Fix Fairy: How Hong Kong Quells COVID-19 Without Killing Civil Liberties

Countries jostle to surrender civil liberties to a techno-fix app to quell COVID-19, but should instead heed Hong Kong’s low-tech lesson.

Links 5/15/2020

Wall Street’s Useful Idiot: Financial Times Shills for CLOs….as Fed Hasn’t Bailed Them Out

A major story on the CLOs chooses not to address the key questions.

Reminder: When the Very Very Rich Are Done With Us, They Plan to Leave Us Behind

More evidence, as if you needed it, that the super rich are not your friends.

America’s Chilling Experiment in Human Sacrifice

The US is willing to practice human sacrifice, rather than explore a way of defining wealth outlined by 19th-century thinker John Ruskin.

2:00PM Water Cooler 5/14/2020

Today’s Water Cooler:

Reopening Isn’t Reopening—It’s Cutting Off Unemployment

In case you wondered why conservative states are all gung ho about reopening….

Links 5/14/2020

Public Pension Plans in a World of Hurt; Even Loyalists Warning of Grim Prospects

Not surprisingly, public pension fund economics look pretty sick.

Congress and Corporations Join Forces To Crush American Small Business

Funny how that small business bailout worked…..