On this, the eve of what I sincerely hope will be the end of the primary season, I am proud to bring you a letter from a registered, card-carrying Democrat. This letter is right now being submitted to the Clinton campaign, the Democratic party, and others. He says, among other things: As a child I was promised that anyone could grow up to be President. For the last 20 years only 2 families have controlled the White House and your election would extend that to 24 or 28 years. That is the death...

Let’s imagine a nice little community of 400 homes. It’s a perfectly average American community, and it could be anywhere: in town, in the ‘burbs, in the countryside. Thanks to the often-cited statistic that 68% of Americans own their homes, we can deduce that perhaps as many as 32% are rental homes, or 128. However, we are going to assume there is an apartment complex down the road, and that only a third of that number are in fact rental homes. We’ll round down to 42. Because...

This post does not reflect the opinions of TMV authors or editorial staff. It is strictly my own. The ArchCrone and the ShortWoman are proud to announce a Mothers Day blogging event called the Mothers Day Blogswarm for Maternal Death. The purpose of this event is twofold: first, it is a counter-protest to a staged "funeral" for embryos and fetuses that hae been aborted; second, we plan to bring attention to the lives of actual women whose lives have been wrecked if not outright ended...

That’s a direct quote from Hillary Clinton. She said it on Countdown last night. She went on to suggest that we would not allow Iran to be a threat to Israel, and that we could “totally obliterate” Iran. And just in case anybody thought it was a slip, she reiterated it on Good Morning America. Whatever you may think of Iran, they are a sovereign nation. It’s just a little reckless to go around threatening to “totally obliterate” them. Granted, some news sources...

Or: A Series of Ineffective but Obvious Quick Fixes for Complex Problems Let me begin, if I may, with two items on that oft-quoted report from 1983, A Nation At Risk: the first from Carrie’s Nation basically calls out the fact that several of the key assertions actually had very little data to support them; the second from the Economic Policy Institute manages to cram in a couple of key ideas, namely that better schools were never going to save Detroit, that you can’t blame the schools...

CNN has been running a series called “Empowered Patient”. The latest installment is entitled How to find the best ER for your child. I feel that this article is seriously out of touch with the way most Americans interact with the health care system in general, let alone the Emergency Department of a hospital. Most of us choose a hospital based on one of two criteria: it is the hospital our insurance will pay for; or it is the hospital closest to the scene of the accident. Even those...

A new report from the Department of Justice has good news and bad news. The good news is that the DEA had “a 50 percent reduction in the frequency with which laptops are lost and stolen” since 2002. Of course they can’t actually figure out what was on all those stolen computers, unlike the 160 laptops the FBI has lost or had stolen during the last 4 years — they think at least 10 of those actually had sensitive information on them. It is known that at least one of the missing...

Oh yes, I watched way too much television as a child. And one fond memory is Detective Columbo conducting his interview: he would ask a series of obvious, softball questions and come off as slightly bumbling; he would thank the person and turn to go; then almost without fail he would turn back and say “Oh! And one more thing!”. Then he would ask the one important question that would unravel the case. And that brings us to Bear Stearns. It was 9 months ago that they were forced to...

Senator Clinton: You remember that Fleetwood Mac song about “Don’t Stop Thinkin About Tomorrow” because “Yesterday’s Gone”? Let’s change tracks on that album. “Do you know how to pick up the pieces and go home?” Yes, dear, it’s that time. You’re behind on real delegates, and your answer was to ask for the rules to be changed regarding Michigan and Florida, and to say that we silly voters should be over-ruled by the almighty super-delegates....

Once again Tim Ionono has some of the better economics-for-Joe-Average commentary going on anywhere, complete with lots of colorful charts. Today he talks about the today’s GDP numbers. For those of you who are perhaps a little fuzzy on GDP — Gross Domestic Product — you can learn a bit about it here, and why it’s important here. The Short version is that “it’s a summary of how the economy is doing, based on who is spending what and whether the money stays here...

This election season we have heard a lot about “health care reform” and “health insurance reform”. Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have been sparring over the issue most of the month. On the other side of the aisle, Senator McCain has also had to address the issue of health care. Everyone agrees we have a “problem” when it comes to health care and health insurance, but there are wildly varying opinions about what should be done. We all know that almost...

If you were to randomly come across a commentary entitled “Stop Supporting a Tainted Food Supply,” where would you suppose you were? Alternet? PETA? Some random editorial that happened to get picked up by Buzzflash? How about financial news site TheStreet.com? After giving us the quickie-version of the latest massive meat recall — which the USDA says shouldn’t concern us because most of the meat has already been eaten and what we don’t know can’t hurt us —...

It was easy to overlook if you were thinking about baseball and mortgages and FISA yesterday, but Iraqi Parliament actually managed to get some good things done. They passed a budget, for one thing. They also defined the powers of the various states — making Iraq a “federal” government. They gave amnesty to thousands of prisoners. They declared that an upcoming election would be scheduled for October 1 (oh, if only the American election cycle were so short). Best of all, these...

The FBI would like to spend about a billion dollars — that’s $1,000,000,000, one thousand million dollars — “to create a massive computer database of people’s physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists.” They admit that among other things, the efficacy and cost “will depend on how quickly technology is perfected.” By way of disclaimer, I do not mind the fact that my fingerprints had...

As I write, it is breaking news that the Fed has cut interest rates for the second time in less than 2 weeks. TheStreet.com reminds us these are the steepest cuts since 1982, bringing us to the lowest rates since 2005. From CNN: The federal funds rate, an overnight bank lending rate that affects how much interest consumers pay on credit cards, home equity lines of credit and auto loans, was cut to 3.0% from 3.5%. The rate had stood at 5.5% only four months ago. The discount rate, which is what...

Last week, when President Bush outlined his proposed stimulus package, someone asked me what I thought. My reply: First, it will raise the national debt and deficit during “wartime”. FDR was more fiscally conservative. Second, as it sits 40% of people won’t get the whole “rebate” because they didn’t pay enough taxes. Those 40% of people are the same people most likely to have a really good way to spend $800-1600. Like the rent or mortgage. Third, as if sending...

Farmers Branch, TX, a fashionable northern suburb of Dallas, has enacted an ordinance that would ban illegal immigrants from renting or owning housing. Now, don’t get me wrong: I do not support illegal immigration in any way shape or form, and I furthermore believe that laws currently on the books should be used to prosecute the employers who exploit them in low-wage, lousy-hours jobs with poor working conditions rather than pay up (and improve working conditions where possible) for a legal,...

Going into yesterday’s caucus, we all knew there were going to be a lot of issues in play: housing; the economy; the Iraq war; health care. Even the issue of whether candidates should be seen anywhere near the floors of our various casinos was mentioned. I arrived at my local Democratic caucus site early, and it was like a pep rally outside. Clinton supporters and Obama supporters were out in force, and loud about it. Planned Parenthood representatives were also on hand. When the doors...