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Monthly Archives: January 2015

Bush, still the worst

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

There is something satisfying about snow days. Your choices are limited by forces beyond your control, so sitting around the house doing nothing is perfectly justifiable. For some of us, of course, the guilt inculcated by years of Catholic education threatens to bubble to the surface, but after years of dealing with it, I've learned […]

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John Scott serves the people

Sunday, January 25, 2015

A while ago I wrote a post about an ethics complaint filed against our newly elected Republican state representative, John Scott. Here's the opening paragraph. As I noted in a previous post, the Democratic down ticket didn't do too well in these parts. One of our new Republican legislators is John Scott. John's campaign consisted […]

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Never give the exploited an even break

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

I didn't watch the State of the Union address last night, but not for any Obama related reason. Ever since Reagan introduced the “people in the audience” crap which every President since has felt duty bound to emulate, I've been sort of sickened at the prospect of watching what has become more and more a […]

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Blinded in the Beltway

Monday, January 19, 2015

I like Richard Blumenthal, but like all politicians (like all people for that matter he's not perfect. Minor mistakes can be forgiven. It is nonetheless distressing to see him buy into an argument that only denizens of the Beltway could swallow. He is co-sponsoring a bill that would allow yet more H1-B workers into the […]

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Bad Moon Rising

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Pam Martens, at Wall Street on Parade, reviews the evidence for a worldwide deflationary spiral: Collapsing yields, collapsing commodity prices are the result of distorted income dispersal, otherwise known as income inequality. Last August, researchers at the Federal Reserve released a study showing the fragility of the U.S. consumer. The Fed’s Division of Consumer and […]

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Some lexical pushback

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Yesterday I bemoaned the tendency of the Left to allow the right to frame the terms of debate, including allowing them to abrogate warm and fuzzy words like “reform” and “pro-life” to describe themselves or their policies. Well, lo and behold, today in my in-box I got something from a group that isn't going to […]

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Lessons from Webster’s and Humpty Dumpty

Monday, January 12, 2015

Today I stumbled upon this article in the Progressive by Connecticut's own Jonathan Pelto, detailing the way in which the proponents of public school privatization are buying political influence. Now, Jonathan is not particularly popular with some of the elected politicians I know, but despite his sometimes abrasive way of writing, I like him because […]

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Two and a half cheers for Obama

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Regular readers (should they exist) will recall that I have been urging the Democrats to stand for something other than being the party that is not crazy (which, oddly enough, is not a compelling selling point in this country). In particular, I've urged forgiveness of student loans and free college tuition in public institutions. So, […]

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Good news in Groton

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

and Stonington, North Stonington, Voluntown and Griswold. Our state Senator, Andy Maynard, who was badly injured in a fall last summer, showed up at the Capitol to be sworn in to the term that he won from a hospital bed. Andy sustained a brain injury. Apparently his ability to think and understand is not impaired, […]

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Yet More Adventures in Economics

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

A few days ago I wrote about an article in the New York Times, that appeared to say that investors were fleeing the lower interest rates paid by European countries for the higher rates that the U.S. is paying. I was puzzled, as the argument made by the expert in the piece appeared to be […]

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