Lower income people dealing with unexpected expenses often turn to companies that offer very short-term loans. These businesses are commonly known as “payday lenders” since the loans are typically meant to last just until the next payday. This isn’t at … Continue reading
President Trump has announced a steep 30 percent tariff on Chinese solar panels supposedly to protect U.S. businesses from cheap Chinese competition. (The tariff falls to 15 percent after four years.) The remaining U.S. solar panel manufacturers are happy with … Continue reading
This eight-minute clip from PBS NewsHour does a pretty good job of synopsizing when people need to know about investing: Link: https://youtu.be/JdUKhgW1gOo An even shorter version would be to invest as much as you can in a tax-sheltered retirement or … Continue reading
As you’ve probably heard, the major credit reporting bureau Equifax had its database broken into by criminals a couple of months ago and sensitive personal information was stolen for nearly half the U.S. population. Equifax has a website where you … Continue reading
When I worked in television in the early 1980s there were rules limiting how many television stations could be owned by a single company, both nationwide and in a single market. I thought this was a good idea at the … Continue reading
An article by Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes just published in Environmental Research Letters concludes that “ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science — by way of its scientists’ academic publications — but promoted doubt about it in advertorials. Given this … Continue reading
The following clip from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show is (reasonably) funny, but it points out something very serious, namely that a major initiative to help people in Appalachia, including coal miners that the president pretends to care about, is … Continue reading
As previously noted (see below), PBS News Hour has broadcast a series on the antibiotics crisis, that is, the appearance of more and more deadly drug-resistant germs and the lack of new antibiotics to deal with them. Here are the … Continue reading
According to National Public Radio, Purdue Farms is making efforts to raise chickens under better conditions with large windows and places for them to roost. When Leah Garces, the executive director of an organization called Compassion in World Farming, was … Continue reading
Something like the X Prize might encourage drug companies to develop new antibiotics even if they’re deliberately held off the market for a while to delay development of resistant pathogens. Link: https://youtu.be/YU5mPUF99BE Other parts of this series: The antibiotic crisis … Continue reading