October 2—The Supreme Court begins its fall session today. Reuters offers a summary of the issues before the Court.

October 2—California governor Gavin Newsome has named Democrat Laphonza Butler, a former labor leader and head of Emily's list who advised Kamala Harris's 2020 campaign, as interim replacement for Senator Diane Feinstein, who died September 29. California voters will select Feinstein's permanent replacement in November 2024.

October 3—Seven California counties will roll out a new program designed to provide care for the seriously mentally ill. The courts, upon petition by family members or first responders, will be able to commit those suffering from untreated schizophrenia to care.

September 15, 2023—3,000 UAW members walked out at manufacturers' plants on Friday (September 15), representing about one tenth of the country's unionized auto workers. The union is asking for significant pay raises as well as assurances that their members will be looked after in the coming transition from internal combustion to electric vehicles. The union made significant concessions to auto manufacturers during the "Great Recession" and argues that assembly plant workers now derserve a greater share of the industry's robust profits.

Economists all agree that at some point, borrowing by the federal government will create inflation and impede productivity and growth. Recent research finds, however, that the level at which government borrowing becomes problematic is certainly greater than what was once thought. With U.S. debt at near-record levels, and the tax plan being pushed by the Trump administration and its congressional allies likely to add more red ink to America's balance sheet, the question is more than academic. This New York Times piece looks at current thinking on the topic. (October 2018)

October 4, 2017—Proposing to add trillions to the national debt in order to deliver tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy, Republicans in Congress and the Accidental President continue to retail the discredited claim that lower taxes on the wealthy will spur economic growth. Writing in the New York Times, Eduardo Porter reports on a key study debunking this "voodoo" economics. Acclaimed French economist Thomas Piketty—along with colleagues at U Cal Berkeley and Harvard—found that enriching the wealthy at the cost of cutting social spending actually decreases economic productivity. The article contains a priceless quote from Bruce Bartlett, who served in the Reagan administration. "In 1986 we dropped the top income tax rate from 50 to 28 percent and the corporate tax rate from 46 to 34 percent. It's hard to imagine a bigger increase in incentives that that, and I can't remember any big boost to growth."

Portugal, the land of Fado music, cork orchards and Port wine, brings another gift to civilization: a way out of the insane drug war which has wracked our civilization, wasting untold billions on a quixotic quest to prevent people from using intoxicants, funding murderous drug gangs and incarcerating millions of especially minority Americans. Portugal, which removed criminal penalties for all drugs in 2001, including cocaine and heroine, has lower rates of addiction and 1/50 the number of drug-related deaths as the United States. Portugal's addiction-intervention efforts cost the state less than $10 per person, while the U.S. drug war costs our nation $10,000 per household. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff visted the sunny nation on the edge of Europe to see how they're doing it.

September 23, 2017—In nothing is the American psychic divide (between urban citizens and the—especially—southern hinterland) more on display than in the Republican primary for Alabama's vacant Senate seat. Roy Moore, the  cashiered judge whose prescription for America centers around returning to Jehovah to avoid His wrath—aroused by abortion, gay marriage and women outside the kitchen—stands a fair chance of prevailing over Luther Strange who, as a firm supporter of Donald Trump, may not be reactionary enough for Alabama's Republican voters.

September 9, 2017—A team of researchers led by Professor Sherri Mason at the State University of New York, Fredonia has confirmed the presence of plastic particles in sea salt, following other studies revealing plastic particles in drinking water, beer and seafood. Humanity is now dumping 12.7 million tons of plastics into the world's oceans each year. Much of it, after breaking down into microscopic particles, is finding its way into our food chain.

September 5, 2017—The dueling nuclear threats of Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump have brought the threat of atomic annihilation, well known to Americans of the boomer generation, back into play. This Guardian article reminds us that way back in 1970, 191 nations signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. By the terms of the accord, non-nuclear states agreed not to acquire nuclear arms, while those states already possessing these instruments of civilian massacre agreed to eliminate them from their arsenals. Since that time, only four additional states have acquired nuclear weapons, but the then-exiting nuclear powers have not taken steps to disarm. Citizens of all nuclear powers must demand their governments work aggressively to remove this scourge from the earth.

August 27, 2017—A lack of housing affordable for citizens of modest incomes plagues cities across the country. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and two Chicago alderman Friday announced a new plan to bring more affordable dwellings to Chicago neighborhoods.

August 25, 2017—Though he has so far failed to move any piece of his legislative agenda in Congress, the Accidental President has undone scores of Obama-era policies through executive orders. This Washington Post piece neatly sums up the damage done.

August 24, 2017—Nine northeast and mid-Atlantic states have for eight years participated in a regional cap-and-trade program aimed at curbing greenhouse emissions. The inititiative, whose members' combined economies would constitute the world's sixth largest if they were a separate nation, has agreed on more ambitious reduction targets: 30% by 2030.

August 23, 2017—Germany, the world's largest mature social democracy, will go to the polls to choose a new national government on September 24. This Deutsche Welle (DW) article neatly explains how the German election system works, with voters choosing both a particular candidate for their district as well as a political party.

August 22, 2017—The Social Democrat finds nearly inconceivable, in 21st-Century America, the continuing existence of Georgia's Mount Rushmore–like Stone Mountain, which commemorates Confederate leaders who dragged our nation into five years of bloody civil war to insure that race-based slavery might forever endure in North America. The much-visited sight in suburban Atlanta, developed by 1960s racists upset over desegregation, saw the founding of the "second KKK" in 1915 and continues to be a rallying point for the psychically diseased.