Economics and Humanities: Public Services or Private Profits?

The Supremes gave orders to California to do something about the prison over-crowding recently. It was a split 5-4 decision as most controversial decisions will be from the current court because there are 4 strongly conservative ideological votes on the court (alito, roberts, scalia, thomas for those tracking the justices) one swing vote (kennedy) and…

More Notes on the Fragility of Empire

“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.” — George F. Kennan (1904-2005) US advisor, diplomat, political analyst, and Pulitzer-prize winning…

Education and the Future

Washington State is pushing college tuition up as part of the budget cutting stage of the Great Recession.  This is exactly the wrong way to go, but it is driven generally by free market forces, forces for deregulation, bubble economy speculators who understand that the current flattened tax table provides the opportunity of a lifetime…