Today’s Water Cooler: Festival of Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders app, the Indivisibe pledge, CAP, employment, manufacturing, housing, construction, credit card debt, House Rules Committee #MedicareForAll hearing, data as blood, water, snow, drought, Uber strike, athletes and testosterone
Wednesday, October 1, 2025
Apple to California Legislators: Consumers Will Hurt Themselves if Provided a Right to Repair
Apple and tech lobbyists delay a California bill to provide a statewide right to repair until 2020, claiming consumers will hurt themselves if the state capitulates on this issue. They also successfully deploy the hackers in the basement boogeyman.
Plastic Watch: Debunking the Technofix Fairy, Biodegradable Bags Don’t Degrade
‘Biodegradable ‘ plastic bags were still intact and capable of carrying shopping three years after being exposed to the natural environment: some arguments and evidence not to rely on the technofix fairy to solve the plastics crisis.
We Live in a World With Very Rich Multinational Mining Companies, and Very Poor Miners
The Porgera Joint Venture – a gold mining operation in Paupa New Guinea, sucks gold out of a mountaintop, providing little benefit to miners or the people who live near the mine. Activist groups, and a lawsuit recently filed in Australia, seek to change that, as well as correct horrific human rights abuses.
Bill Black: If Current Laws Prosecuting Bankers Aren’t Used, What Can Warren Change?
Bill Black demolishes the notion that we can’t prosecute banksters with laws now in place. He there’s no need to pass new laws – as Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes – but instead to appoint regulators and legal officers who’ll use what we know about dealing with criminogenic environments to prosecute white collar criminals. And to provide them with support and resources.
2:00PM Water Cooler 4/30/2019
Today’s Water Cooler: China trade deal and enforcement, Biden, Buttigieg, Gravel, O’Rourke, Sanders, Warren, AM radio, manufacturing, employment cost, housing, Alden Capital, Boeing, Tesla, permafrost, health insurance, the Battle of Winterfell, the codex vs. the scroll
How Far Can We Push Fiscal Spending in Light of MMT? Some Optimistic Reflections on the Potential For Economic Experimentation
Estimating where MMT’s inflation constraint on fiscal spending kicks in.
The Tragedy of the Electric Commons: How New York’s Renewable Energy Policy Failed, and What We Can Do Now
Why renewable energy has gone nowhere in New York state….the fear that it would produce a death spiral for utilities.
Buttigieg’s Small Donor Surge: Less There Than Meets the Eye?
A first look at the data about Buttigieg’s donors raises some uncomfortable questions.
What the April 15 Emerson Democratic Primary Poll Says About Emerson and Sanders
It’s 2016 all over again, as the press and analysts go to unusual lengths to ignore Sanders’ gains.
Hope You Can Make One of Our Meetups This Week! Milwaukee This Wed May 1, Minneapolis Thurs May 2
Reinders and details for this week’s meetups! Hope you can stop by!
2:00PM Water Cooler 4/29/2019
Today’s Water Cooler: Festival of Biden, Buttigieg, Gravel, Hickenlooper, Moulton, O’Rourke, Sanders, Trump, Warren, Weld, the Clintons, redistricting, white nationalism, factory farms, personal income, manufacturing, UK fracking, ocean plastic, thunderstorms, reforestation, PFAS, Stanford University Press, adjuncts, Zuckerberg, computers and kids
Boeing Kept Mum to Customers, FAA About Disabling of 737 Max Warning System
Even more bad facts about the Boeing 737 Max are coming out.
