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Thom Dunn / 9:30 am Fri, Mar 20, 2020

More than half of Americans actually think Trump is handling coronavirus well

Sure, he pretended it was all a "Democrat hoax" for the last 2 months; neglected to do anything but downplay the virus for those 2 months; repeatedly used the pandemic as an excuse for anti-Asian racism; and brought his own precious economy to a grinding halt as unemployment reached record highs.

But according to a new ABC News / Ipsos poll, 55 percent of Americans think that President Trump is doing a good job with the COVID-19 outbreak.

Political Polls / Survey USA presents similar results:

I'd like to see ol' Donny wriggle his way out of this one, nevertheless, etc etc.

Coronavirus upends nation, as three in four Americans' lives changed by pandemic: POLL [Kendall Karson / ABC News]

Image: Public Domain via US Department of Defense and Gage Skidmore/Flickr via CC 2.0

  Read the rest

Thom Dunn / 7:16 am Thu, Feb 13, 2020

Man who helped cause 2008 financial crash suddenly very concerned about the economy

Lloyd Blankfein might sound like the name of a fictional banker villain, but he is in fact the real-life Senior Chairman  of Goldman Sachs. Prior to his current position, he served as chairman and chief executive of the infamous banking giant beginning in 2006 — just before that pesky financial crisis from which the world is still recovering.

To his credit, Blankfein did apologize for his company's role as a liquidity provider for subprime mortgages. Specifically, he said, "We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret. We apologize." That was in 2009 — the absolute pits of the economy — and around the same time he was named "Person of the Year" by the Financial Times. Within months, he was touting his duties of "doing God's work" while the rest of us were still scrounging for employment or to recover the last few scraps of money we had foolishly invested on the advice of people on Blankfein.

Anyway, he's really concerned that Bernie Sanders will "ruin" "our" economy, should he be elected as President of the United States in the upcoming election.

Presumably, Blankfein was not referring to our economy — as in the economy that affects normal human beings such as you or I, which he has previously participated in ruining — but rather, his economy, that is, the pleasures enjoyed by him and his ilk of obscenely wealthy, out-of-touch, and utterly untouchable oligarchs. Read the rest

Cory Doctorow / 5:38 am Thu, Nov 15, 2018

Companies keep losing your data because it doesn't cost them anything

Data breaches keep happening, they keep getting worse, and yet companies keep collecting our data in ever-more-invasive ways, subjecting it to ever-longer retention, and systematically underinvesting in security. Read the rest

Cory Doctorow / 6:13 am Sat, Dec 9, 2017

Americans have no savings, with good reason: housing, education and health care costs are out of control, wages are stagnant, and the Fed has suppressed interest rates

The American savings crisis is a time-bomb, as multiple generations hurtle toward retirement with effectively no savings, and experts are now saying that having $1 million in the bank on retirement day isn't enough. Future generations will either have to let their parents starve or compromise their own ability to produce the next generation while caring for the previous one (this is the crisis underway in China and Japan right now). Read the rest

Cory Doctorow / 10:43 am Tue, Sep 5, 2017

Generations aren't really important (but class is)

Everything attributed to Millennials was attributed to Gen X and Boomers and, well, everyone, pretty much (every time someone tells you that Millennials aren't interested in working and have no ambition, just think about the alleged "slacker" phenomenon in Generation X). Read the rest

Cory Doctorow / 9:11 am Sun, Oct 30, 2016

How Minnesota's governor performed an economic miracle by raising tax on the rich and increasing minimum wage

By every measure, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton's five year run as governor has been a stellar success: while Tim Pawlenty, his tax-slashing, "fiscally-conservative" Republican predecessor presided over a $6.2B deficit and a 7% unemployment rate (the mere 6,200 jobs added under Pawlenty's 7-year run barely registered), Dayton added 172,000 new jobs to the Minnesota economy, brought Minnesota down to the fifth-lowest unemployment rate in the country, and brought the average Minnesotan income up to $8,000 more than the median US worker, while posting a $1B budget surplus. Read the rest