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Category: Policy

[:en]Angus Deaton on US poverty – E pur si muove! [:]
17/02/2018
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| General, Policy

It is certainly welcome news to be able to write a positive follow up. Without mentioning either Adam Smith or neo-classical economics by name, Deaton  has put a huge dagger into their backs in an op-ed article in New York Times (Note 1).  He categorically states ‘…it is time to stop thinking that only non-Americans are truly poor.’ Trickle down and work incentives simply do not prevent extreme poverty and if they do not prevent it in US they…

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[:en]Scott Adams, CNN and apologies for racism[:]
13/01/2018
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| Policy

There has been quite a bit of fallout from Trump’s recent remarks referring to Haiti and African  countries as ‘s****holes’. (Note 3 Trump’s ‘shithole’ comment is his new rock bottom – CNNPolitics) Recently Scott Adams was on CNN today, 13 Jan 2018, explaining that Trump is unlikely to be a racist because years ago on a TV show  he said he would choose Oprah as VP if he ever ran for President. This is a silent and deadly distortion…

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[:en]WSJ and Charlottesville: Parsing the text[:]
22/08/2017
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| Policy, Politics

(Image courtesy of NBC News)   One of the enduring issues that arise when African Americans speak to a dominant media forum about race is a failure to ‘parse the script’. They come to a debate with their own version of the meaning of words and events and this is futile. While emphasizing their own views creates solidarity with a group and confirms them in their own world view it achieves absolutely nothing in a debate which rapidly becomes…

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[:en]Deaton & Case – ‘sea of despair’ revisited[:]
11/08/2017
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| Policy, Politics

Like a well worn script when we look back at the report of Deaton & Case we can see  precisely how it was strategized. A widespread opiod epidemic  is deflected from major US corporations  onto  the effect of equal opportunity and African Americans. Lets have poor Whites and poor Blacks have a fight. Our attention is turned away from the role of the pharmaceutical industry and medical profession to the effects of equal opportunity legislation.  In this case it…

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[:en]Shell and Global Witness: how to hide the truth[:]
15/04/2017
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| Economics, Policy
shell logo

This is an amazing story, not the corruption (which is barely news) , but the misreporting by Global Witness and the Western  media generally. Global Witness write: “NEW LEAKED EMAILS PUT SHELL AT CENTRE OF BILLION DOLLAR BRIBERY SCHEME INVOLVING SOME OF THE MOST POWERFUL OFFICIALS IN NIGERIA” (ref 1)   They  then write: “Shell’s most senior executives were told payments for massive oil block would go to a convicted money-launderer, and then likely flow to then President Goodluck…

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[:en]white working class male ‘despair’ – or concealed racism?[:]
01/04/2017
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| Economics, Policy

There has been widespread coverage  of  a report (ref 7)  that the white working class males are suffering from a ‘sea of despair’ causing a huge rise in deaths. This is inexplicably linked to a  comparison with the declining rate of  death of African American people.  An unstated implication which many are reading is that the decline in mortality for Black people is related to the rise for white working class.  This is political dynamite and is completely…

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