Saturday, June 30, 2018

Reverie


 

 "Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists."--Chesterton 






Michael Pearson, an air traffic controller for 27 years who is suing the FAA, said, “A group within the FAA, including the human resources function within the FAA — the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees — determined that the workforce was too white.” A Republican-controlled Congress during Obama's second term cut a deal allowing the FAA to hire half of new controllers based on race.





“Since the early 2000s, employers have mostly embraced high-deductible health plans” on the theory “that requiring workers to shoulder more of the cost of care will also encourage them to cut back on unnecessary spending.” However, many families could not afford the deductibles and “studies show that many put off routine care or skipped medication to save money” – meaning “illnesses that might have been caught early can go undiagnosed, becoming potentially life-threatening and enormously costly for the medical system.” Now, “some employers are beginning to have second thoughts,” with “a handful of companies” planning “to reduce deductibles or cover more care before workers are exposed to the cost.” --from an article in Bloomberg



Heather MacDonald is a writer who believes that police, fearful of criticism, have become acquiescent toward criminal behavior; She had this funny observation in a interview:  

"There's a co-dependency between the exploding diversity bureaucracy and these narcissistic, delusional students who act out little psychodramas of oppression before an appreciative audience of diversity bureaucrats." (The interviewer asks, "Psychodramas of oppression?")
"Do we believe in objective reality?" she replied. "These students ... are among the most privileged human beings in human history. To be at an American college with educational resources available to them that the Renaissance humanists would have killed for. (Yet they) think of themselves as victims. That, to me, is a very sad state of delusion."




Also puzzling is the constant refrain about China producing more than it needs. Even if this overcapacity were a boon for China, it would still be to the benefit of millions of American consumers. It lowers costs for thousands of small U.S. manufacturers and steel consumers. But in reality, this “overproduction” is a tragedy for the Chinese people because their government’s subsidization of steel production inevitably diverts resources from other areas of the Chinese economy. I don’t hear Americans and Europeans complaining about all the stuff China isn’t producing because its government stupidly wants to produce a lot of steel.--de Rugy


Langbert breaks down the faculty Democrat-to-Republican ratio by academic department, and there are not many surprises. Engineering departments have 1.6 Democrats for every Republican. Chemistry and economics departments have about 5.5 Democrats for every Republican. The situation is especially bad in anthropology departments, where the Democrat-to-Republican faculty ratio is 133-to-1, and in communications departments, where the ratio is 108-to-zero. Langbert says, "I could not find a single Republican with an exclusive appointment to fields like gender studies, Africana studies, and peace studies."

Later on in the study, Langbert turns his attention to Democrat-to-Republican faculty ratios at some of our most elite colleges. At Williams College, the Democrat-to-Republican ratio is 132-to-1. At Amherst College, it's 34-to-1. Wellesley's is 136-to-1. At Swarthmore, 120-to-1. Claremont McKenna, 4-to-1. Davidson, 10-to-1. Only two colleges of the top 66 on U.S. News & World Report's 2017 list have a modicum of equality in numbers between Democratic and Republican faculty members. They are the U.S. Military Academy, aka West Point, with a Democrat-to-Republican ratio of 1.3-to-1, and the U.S. Naval Academy, whose ratio is 2.3-to-1.

Who is....William Gladstone?



Food and Drug Administration is urging medical device manufacturers and healthcare providers to improve their cybersecurity and the agency intends to establish a dedicated investigative team to look at incidents when they arise. Hacking pacemakers?




A 65-year-old couple retiring in 2018 will need about $280,000 to cover health care and medical expenses throughout retirement, according to Fidelity Investments’ annual cost estimate.



Oliver Stone, making his first-ever visit to Iran, says the United States is a global "outlaw" that has made a mess of the Middle East. The director of "JFK" and "Platoon" spoke at a press conference Wednesday during his visit to the country, where he attended an international film festival.
Stone reprised his criticism of the 2003 Iraq war and suggested the U.S. has acted similarly in Libya and Syria, saying: "We are outlaws, we're doing something that is outlawed internationally, we had no permission to invade Iraq from the U.N., we did it, and we continue to do this."

He went on to say that "national security has trumped artistic freedom," claiming "you cannot make a film critical of the United States' foreign policy." (from an internet news)
The maker of the insane/idiotic "JFK" takes, unasked, the high ground.
 
About one-quarter of parents living with a child in America in 2018 are unmarried, up from 7% five decades ago, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data released Wednesday.
Non-traditional families now also outnumber traditional two-parent families.





Sanders wants the government to provide guaranteed jobs at $15 an hour, plus benefits. His office did not  yet have cost estimates for this proposal. Some estimates: With two weeks of paid vacation, each worker would make roughly $31,000 a year. Adding, conservatively, about $10,000 for benefits, would bring the total cost to about $40,000. The United States has between 25 million and 50 million workers making less than this total compensation package. Millions more are unemployed or fully out of the labor force. Assuming most of them did the rational thing and signed on, that would make for a $1 trillion to $2 trillion annual program — rivaling spending on Social Security and maybe Medicaid. Private business would have to raise wages to compete and, of course, raise prices.

The idea of creating work and then hiring people to do those jobs seems to be reversed without much questioning.



Hit-and-run crash deaths are rising nationwide, and pedestrians and bicyclists account for close to 70% of the victims, according to a new report, as more people cycle to work and motor-vehicle fatalities are at a near-decade-high level. (wsj)




In 1986, the world’s worst nuclear power plant accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Soviet Union. Thirty-two people died and dozens more suffered radiation burns in the opening days of the crisis, but only after Swedish authorities reported the fallout did Soviet authorities reluctantly admit that an accident had occurred.



Astronomers have just discovered what may become the largest thing in the modern universe: a giant cluster of at least 14 galaxies, set on a massive collision course.
This is the absolute first time that scientists have ever detected an astronomical event of such colossal proportions, ScienceDaily reports.







In 1940, only one-quarter of American adults had completed high school, and only 5 percent had a college degree.





There are no limits to health care, right? There is no rationing, right? A new wave of genetic-based therapies for treating cancer for the drugs and related care for a single patient can run up close to a million dollars.





When negotiating collective-bargaining agreements or deciding whether to strike, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association don’t have students in mind any more than the United Automobile Workers has car buyers in mind.--Riley










AAAAAaaaannnnnnddddd......a graph:

Source: Economic Cycles Research Institute

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