The inescapable dilemma facing social democracy
Saturday, July 12, 2025
Trump CFPB Appointees Use COVID-19 Crisis as Rationale to Weaken Consumer Protection
Trump appointees use the COVID-19 crisis to rollback consumer protections against financial predation put in place by the CFPB.
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.
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.
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….
