2:00PM Water Cooler 11/12/2024 | naked capitalism

2:00PM Water Cooler 11/12/2024 | naked capitalism

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Chook Track of the Day

Northern Mockingbird, Granville Faculties Land Lab, Licking, Ohio, United States. “Track.”

* * *

In Case You Would possibly Miss…

  1. Deploy the Blame Cannons!
  2. Boeing avoids legal responsibility for Ethiopian MCAS crash in settlement, restarts manufacturing however with layoffs.
  3. Elite maleficence at ASHRAE, hospitals, and An infection Prevention and Management.
  4. Extra money does purchase extra happiness.

* * *

Politics

“So lots of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are actually a rational administration of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

* * *

2024 Publish Mortem

From a Republican pollster, however AP Votecast knowledge:

So, a change election in spite of everything.

* * *

Deploy the Blame Cannons!

Lambert right here: Normally, the lastest barrages of blame cannonry are higher written than the earlier scorching take emisisons, undecided why. Extra to return!

“Kamala Harris ran the Fyre Competition of campaigns” [ybC" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">The Spectator]. “As the finger-pointing begins, and the autopsy of the Kamala Harris campaign continues, financial details are being released on how the Harris campaign managed to blow more than $1 billion in war-chest funds — and not only lose, but get wiped off the electoral map by Donald Trump, who ended his campaign with roughly $488 million. That’s not a Dr. Evil typo: Kamala Harris not only blew a billion dollars, but actually ended up $20 million in debt. Where did the money all go? To celebrities mostly, and elaborate sets and stages. As it turns out, not all of those celebrity “activists” appeared with Kamala Harris because they believed in her or were doing their civic duty by getting engaged. They charged fees — and some were astronomical. Harris made elaborate promises to her crowds about celebrity performances. Crowds were brought in with the promise of seeing Beyoncé perform, only to leave disappointed. It was all a financial ruse, much like the infamous Fyre Festival of 2017… the Harris campaign spent upwards of six figures to build a custom set for her appearance on the Call Me Daddy podcast, which only netted about 800,000 downloads. Meanwhile, Donald Trump appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast — and his interview has got more than 47 million views on YouTube. There were seven swing-state concerts that involved high-priced performers — Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Jon Bon Jovi, Ricky Martin and more — who seemingly ended up costing the Harris campaign more than $20 million on event production alone, and reportedly even more on paying the celebrities to appear. Even Oprah Winfrey charged the campaign $1 million to show up. The campaign went so far into debt that the campaign was reportedly forced to scrap Canadian Nineties indie-pop singer Alanis Morissette to save money. The pop concert campaign strategy is said to have been the brainchild of former Obama advisors on the campaign.” • Ironic [chortles]. “Is said to have been” by whom?

* * *

Democrats en Déshabillé

“The model exactly predicted the most likely election map” [Nate Silver]. But that’s not the interesting part. In a footnote: “I essentially got to perform a randomized control trial on how partisans in both camps reacted to good and bad news. And there was an asymmetry. Republicans are generally happy when you agree with them partway or half the time. Admittedly, the sorts of Republicans who encounter our work are not a representative sample, probably being on the moderate side — though you can find plenty of Trump supporters in the Silver Bulletin comments section. Democrats, however — and here, I’m not referring so much to Silver Bulletin subscribers but in the broader universe online — often get angry with you when you only halfway agree with them. And I really think this difference in personality profiles tells you a little something about why Trump won: Trump was happy to take on all comers, whereas with Democrats, disagreement on any hot-button topic (say, COVID school closures or Biden’s age) will have you cast out as a heretic. That’s not a good way to build a majority, and now Democrats no longer have one.” • Democrats, as we would expect, are doubling down on this behavior: There’s a concerted effort to move high(er)-traffic accounts off Twitter onto Blue Sky, as if the world needed more Democrat embubblement than it already has. Further, for all its many faults, Elon Musk’s hell-site still has a very functional Covid-conscious community, which these trolls would end up splitting, not that such a thing would matter to them. Brunch at Blue Sky!

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

* * *

Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

Airborne Transmission: H5N1

“Dependence of aerosol-borne influenza A virus infectivity on relative humidity and aerosol composition” [Frontiers in Microbiology]. They have a fancy new machine: “We describe a novel biosafety aerosol chamber equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation for bubble-bursting aerosol generation, size distribution measurement, and condensation-growth collection to minimize sampling artifacts when measuring virus infectivity in aerosol particles.” Interestingly: “Despite decades of research, there remains great difficulty in identifying and understanding the factors that control the spread of influenza epidemics, which occur each year in both hemispheres. In this study, we aimed to simulate exhalation, airborne residence, and re-inhalation of IAV-containing particles as accurately as possible. As an initial step, we specifically used purely saline aerosol particles to avoid the complexity of natural matrices. We revealed large discrepancies between aerosol-borne viruses and previous microliter droplet experiments performed with similar matrices. The discrepancies between aerosol and deposited droplet experiments need to be explained in order to obtain a reliable model for aerosol transmission.” • Thanks, droplet dogmatists.

Maskstravaganza

Smile Nazis in music:

Testing and Monitoring: H5N1

“Chook flu infections in farmworkers are going undetected, examine reveals” [STAT]. “[CDC] findings, revealed Thursday, counsel {that a} small however not insignificant variety of H5N1 infections are going undetected amongst individuals who work with dairy cows. Blood samples taken from 115 farm employees in Michigan and Colorado over the summer season discovered proof of a current an infection in eight people — half of whom recalled being ailing across the identical time the cows have been sick. The opposite half couldn’t recall having any signs.” Serological surveys. Extra: “In response to the brand new knowledge, the CDC is now recommending that any farm employees who have been uncovered to contaminated animals be examined for H5N1, whether or not or not they’ve signs. Beforehand, the company suggested that solely people who had been uncovered and had signs be examined. The aim of this enlargement is to accentuate case-finding efforts, in order that even employees with gentle or unnoticeable infections may be supplied remedy and isolation. The CDC can be recommending that Tamiflu be supplied to any people on a farm with contaminated animals who’ve had a high-risk publicity — like being splashed with milk from a dairy cow or taking part in a culling operation on a poultry farm — with out enough private protecting tools. The CDC’s examine discovered that every one eight individuals with H5N1 antibodies had reported cleansing milking parlors, and most reported milking cows. None of them reported carrying respiratory safety and fewer than half wore eye safety.”

Elite Maleficence

“ASHRAE Normal 62: tobacco trade’s affect over nationwide air flow requirements” [Tobacco Control]. BMJ 2002 (!). From the Summary: ” The tobacco trade has been concerned within the growth of air flow requirements for over 20 years. It has efficiently influenced the usual and continues to aim to vary the usual from a smoke-free framework into an “lodging” framework. The trade acts instantly and thru consultants and allies. The most important well being teams have been largely absent and the well being pursuits have been poorly represented in commonplace growth. Whereas concentrated within the USA, ASHRAE requirements are adopted worldwide.” • Commentary:

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“Discovered and Unlearned Classes in High quality and Security From Hospitals’ COVID-19 Burdens” (Invited Commentary) [z0s" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">JAMA]. “[S]till absent from the peer-reviewed literature is a discussion of the importance of hospital quality performance reporting and benchmarking in times of crisis as a mechanism to ensure safety. Hospitals in the US were effectively relieved of their obligations to provide high-quality pandemic-era care when pay-for-performance programs, rankings, and ratings . The findings of Metersky et al demonstrate that quality and safety data are needed more than ever during times of crisis. This would allow patients and payers to understand which hospitals have resilient systems in order to make informed decisions about where they choose to receive and fund health care.” Fortunately: “With hospital-specific COVID-19 admissions data from HHS coupled with patient-level Medicare or other electronic health record or claims data, it is still possible to recreate the unreported pandemic-era quality outcomes benchmarks to identify resilient hospitals, systems, and processes during surge capacity. In fact, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ FY 2025 Inpatient Prospective Payment System Proposed Rule will extend the COVID-19 admissions data to include data for all respiratory illnesses.”

IPC = Infection Prevention and Control. I apologize for the length, but it occurred to me that if any readers end up in hospital, the highlighted methods of infection provide a really good checklist:

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* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
This week[1] fOH" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">CDC November 4 Last Week[2] CDC (until next week):

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XeM" alt="" width="310" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-281871" srcset="XeM 600w, nmS 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"/>
Variants [3] CDC November 9 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC November 2

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Hospitalization
New York[5] New York State, data November 8: National [6] CDC November 8:

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3Qf" alt="" width="310" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-282037" srcset="3Qf 600w, vuA 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"/>
Positivity
National[7] Walgreens November 11: ★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic November 9:

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Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC October 21: Variants[10] CDC October 21:

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5dI" alt="" width="310" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-281870" srcset="5dI 600w, UCT 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"/>
Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC November 2: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC November 2:

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LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) Good news!

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* still popular. XEC has entered the chat. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.

[4] (ED) Down.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Steadily down.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Actually improved; it’s now one of the few charts to show the entire course of the pandemic to the present day.

[7] (Walgreens) Down.

[8] (Cleveland) Down.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Down.

[10] (Travelers: Variants). Now XEC.

[11] Deaths low, positivity down.

[12] Deaths low, ED down.

Stats Watch

There are no official statistics of interest today.

* * *

Antitrust: “How Albertsons Kills Rural Grocers with Land Use Restrictions” [Matt Stoller, BIG]. “[S]upermarket executives see rural markets as particularly easy to monopolize, because there is often just one store. They even have a name, “no-comp[etition] or low-comp[etition] zones,” according to one executive on the stand. Of course that makes sense, we’d expect firms to maximize profits where they can. One might be tempted to say, well, there are some towns that can’t support more than one store. And that might be true, except that there are several examples of supermarket chains using tactics in such towns to thwart the opening of competition. How? Well, they find a way to dominate the existing plots of land and buildings suitable for such a store. In June, for instance, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who is also litigating against the merger, fined Albertsons $25,000 for imposing a land use restriction on a store it sold in 2018 in a low-income section of Bellingham, Washington. As part of the sale, the supermarket giant put a requirement on the deed that no grocery store could open there until 2038. Ferguson found this provision was a violation of the state antitrust law. These kinds of land use restrictions are likely common. A few months ago, I got an email from an economist focused on rural areas, who explained how Albertsons abuses its market power in a series of small skiing towns in rural California using a similar strategy.”

Manufacturing: “Boeing reaches settlement to avert civil trial in 2019 Max crash” [eJX" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Straits Times]. “The crash of the Ethiopian Airlines plane killed 157 people. The trial was set to begin on Nov 12 in Chicago. It originally involved six plaintiffs but until now all but one had settled, according to a source familiar with the case. The hearing on Nov 12 will take place to inform Judge Jorge Alonso of the settlement, who must approve the deal for it to be officially settled, the source said. ‘It is a damage-only trial, meaning no evidence regarding the liability of Boeing will be presented,’ the source told AFP.” • Too bad.

Manufacturing: “Boeing Got The Easy Part Done. Now Comes The Tougher, Existential Problems” [Seattle Medium]. “Boeing is America’s largest exporter, and therefore very exposed to any trade war. China is the largest global market for new aircraft purchases, with Boeing forecasting that China’s fleet of commercial jets will double in the next 20 years. The aircraft maker has been down this road before. The company’s sales to China ground to a near-halt in 2017 as trade tensions between the two countries escalated during Trump’s first term. Orders from Chinese buyers fell from 64 in 2016 to 51 in 2017 to zero in both 2018 and 2019. A similar drop could occur if a new trade war breaks out. ‘We really don’t know what Trump will do with Chinese tariffs,’ said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, an industry consultant. ‘But if he slaps 60% tariffs on all Chinese goods, the quickest way for China to retaliate is to switch to (Boeing rival) Airbus for 100% of its needs.’ Boeing has seen a modest resumption of sales and deliveries to China recently, with 20 orders in 2021 and 15 in 2023. So far this year it has 53 deliveries to China, up from 35 in the four previous years combined.”

Manufacturing: “Employees across Boeing face sweeping layoffs this week” [Seattle Times]. “Boeing employees will learn Wednesday who will lose their jobs in mid-January in the round of layoffs Boeing announced last month. The cuts will be broadly spread across the company and, despite some expectations earlier, engineers and production workers won’t be exempt…. But a Boeing senior engineering manager in St. Louis said the cuts in the works target a roughly 10% reduction across the engineers supporting military programs, including the F-15 and F/A-18 jet fighters and the Navy’s P-8 submarine hunter, which is built in Renton with military systems installed in Seattle. Those engineering organizations will shrink, said the manager, who asked not to be identified to protect his job. “If the idea in Kelly’s mind is cutting overhead and programs will not be impacted, that’s not what’s happening.’…. Still, it’s clear non-front-line positions will suffer bigger losses. And white-collar staff working remotely may be particularly targeted as Ortberg tries to get the workforce connected and aligned with his new direction. A manager of a small team of about 15 people, all working remotely — and ironically focused on ways to improve efficiency in program management — told one employee to expect a 30% cut in his team. ‘If we are not holding a wrench, if we’re considered overhead, it’s about 30%,’ said the employee, who also asked not to be identified to protect his job. The reduction for ‘people working on planes might be less than 5%.’”

Manufacturing: “Boeing delivers fewest planes since 2020, warns factory restart after strike will take weeks” [CNBC]. “As the workers return, Boeing has to assess potential hazards, restate machinist duties and safety requirements, and ensure that all training qualifications are current, a spokesman said. ‘It’s much harder to turn this on than it is to turn it off,’ CEO Kelly Ortberg said during the company’s quarterly call last month. ‘So it’s absolutely critical that we do this right.’”

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 69 Greed (previous close: 67 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 47 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 12 at 1:49:44 PM ET.

Photo Book

“Leaving and Waving” [Deanna Dikeman]. “For 27 years, I took photographs as I waved good-bye and drove away from visiting my parents at their home in Sioux City, Iowa. I started in 1991 with a quick snapshot, and I continued taking photographs with each departure. I never set out to make this series. I just took these photographs as a way to deal with the sadness of leaving. It gradually turned into our good-bye ritual. And it seemed natural to keep the camera busy, because I had been taking pictures every day while I was there. These photographs are part of a larger body of work I call Relative Moments, which has chronicled the lives of my parents and other relatives since 1986. When I discovered the series of accumulated “leaving and waving” photographs, I found a story about family, aging, and the sorrow of saying good-bye. In 2009, there is a photograph where my father is no longer there. He passed away a few days after his 91st birthday. My mother continued to wave good-bye to me. Her face became more forlorn with my departures. In 2017, my mother had to move to assisted living. For a few months, I photographed the good-byes from her apartment door. In October of 2017 she passed away. When I left after her funeral, I took one more photograph, of the empty driveway. For the first time in my life, no one was waving back at me.”

Zeitgeist Watch

“Why Close Reading is An Essential Part of Literary Translation” [lDf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Literary Hub]. “Reading—’this fruitful miracle of communication in the bosom of solitude,’ as Proust called it in a translator’s preface— is miraculously and mysteriously neither objective nor subjective, neither purely taking something in nor purely revealing or expressing what’s inside oneself. It is a complex interplay of the self and the world, analogous to perception—we see what’s really there in the world, but we see it, and it’s there in our world, the environment we move in and care about, which is different from the environment of any other person or animal in the same physical space.” • Take that, influencers!

Class Warfare

“The ‘Happiness Plateau’ Doesn’t Exist” [PhE" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Bloomberg]. “[T]he latest academic work chips away at the idea that there is a plateau, just as previous academic work chipped away at the idea of happy peasants and miserable bourgeois. Matthew Killingsworth, of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, has amassed a sample of more than one million real-time reports of experienced well-being in the US (compiled by getting people to report their day-to-day well-being on their smartphones). In a 2021 paper he studied 33,000 people who provided such real-time evidence and discovered three things: that there is no evidence of a divergence between evaluative and real-time well-being; that real-time well-being rises linearly with income and, third, that the slope is just as steep above $80,000 a year as below. The idea of a happiness plateau is for the birds: Higher incomes are clearly associated with both feeling better on a day-to-day basis and being more satisfied with your life overall. What about people who earn well above $80,000? In a new paper Killingsworth compares the reported life-satisfaction of his sample of 33,000 Americans with a wide variety of incomes with the reported life-satisfaction of two groups of ultra-wealthy individuals: millionaires from around the world and members of the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. His conclusions are well-summarized in the title of his study: ‘Money and Happiness: Extended Evidence against Satiation.’ Truly wealthy people are significantly happier than the highest earners in the ordinary income group if you take ‘life satisfaction’ as a meaningful measure of happiness. Moreover, the happiness gap between truly wealthy people and middle-income earners is three times as large as the happiness gap between middle and low-income groups. We not only get happier as we move from the middle-income herd to the Succession crowd, but we get a lot happier. Killingsworth’s study is not perfect: There is such a shortage of evidence about the well-being of the truly wealthy that one of the studies he relies on, of the Forbes 400, dates from 1985 (the other is from 2018). But never has the phrase ‘more research is required’ sounded more attractive.” • If there were in fact a happiness plateau, would there not also tend to be a capital accumulation plateau for capitalist owners? There doesn’t seem to be.

Alert reader JM forwards this sugarpack from Spain:

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JM writes: “Reading the discussion about Angus Deaton in today’s (11/11/24) Water Cooler, I thought of a photo I snapped on a recent trip to Spain. Interesting to order a coffee and find this on my sugar packet….”

News of the Wired

Ooops:

That’s not gonna make peer evaluate any simpler:

* * *

Contact data for crops: Readers, be at liberty to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) learn how to ship me a verify if you’re allergic to PayPal and (b) to learn how to ship me pictures of crops. Greens are positive! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary crops! In order for you your deal with to seem as a credit score, please place it at first of your mail in parentheses: (thus). In any other case, I’ll anonymize through the use of your initials. See the earlier Water Cooler (with plant) right here. From MR:

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MR writes: “A photograph of an ‘providing’ that I and some mates made on September 29 as a part of a birthday ritual for me. Be aware the cupcakes, which we ultimately ate.”

Form readers, due to those that immediately responded! Nonetheless, my queue for plant pictures continues to be brief, and that at all times makes me queasy. Do you’ve gotten an pictures to ship in, particularly of autumn produce or winter initiatives? Thanks!

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I’ve had a correspondent characterize my views as sensible cynical. Let me briefly clarify them. I consider in common applications that present concrete materials advantages, particularly to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime instance, however tuition-free faculty and a Publish Workplace Financial institution additionally fall beneath this heading. So do a Jobs Assure and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can ship on such applications, as a result of the 2 are totally different flavors of neoliberalism (“As a result of markets”). I don’t a lot care concerning the “ism” that delivers the advantages, though whichever one does need to put frequent humanity first, versus markets. May very well be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t a lot care, so long as the advantages are delivered.

To me, the important thing subject — and for this reason Medicare for All is at all times first with me — is the tens of 1000’s of extra “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton examine, and different current research. That big physique depend makes Medicare for All, on the very least, an ethical and strategic crucial. And that degree of struggling and natural injury makes the considerations of identification politics — even the worthy combat to assist the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — shiny shiny objects by comparability. Therefore my frustration with the information circulation — presently for my part the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the opposite by out-of-power liberals and their allies within the State and within the press — a information circulation that continuously forces me to deal with issues that I regard as of secondary significance to the surplus deaths. What sort of political financial system is it that halts and even reverses the will increase in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I’m additionally very hopeful that the persevering with destruction of each occasion institutions will open the house for voices supporting applications much like these I’ve listed; let’s name such voices “the left.” Volatility creates alternative, particularly if the Democrat institution, which places markets first and opposes all such applications, isn’t allowed to get again into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I really like the tactical degree, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been running a blog about it each day for fourteen years, however the whole lot I write has this attitude in the back of it.









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