The Department of Labor reported Thursday that yet another 2.1 million Americans, on a seasonally adjusted basis, applied for initial state unemployment benefits in the week that ended May 23. Counting these new applications makes for a total of 40.5 million workers who have filed for initial benefits over the past 10 weeks. Add in the millions of Americans who are receiving […]
In a story they broke this morning, Jeff Stein and Josh Dawsey at The Washington Post report that the Trump regime has decided it will not deliver economic projections in the traditional “mid-session review” of the budget this summer. Budget experts the reporters interviewed said they didn’t know of any time in the past half century when an administration has […]
The federal government has abandoned America’s small towns as the coronavirus depletes their budgets. It’s flood season and local leaders have no idea how to help residents through natural disasters. “We do not see how we will survive,” one told us. #BREAKING: Evacuation orders issued for areas in and around the city of Midland, Michigan […]
It was only a few decades ago that Walmart entered the pantheon of American icons, joining motherhood, apple pie, and baseball on the highest tier of the altar. The people were entranced by this behemoth cornucopia of unbelievably cheap stuff packaged in gargantuan quantities. It was something like their participation trophy for the sheer luck […]
The Department of Labor reported Thursday that 2.38 million workers filed new claims for unemployment benefits in the week ending May 16. That brings the total count for the past nine weeks to a seasonally adjusted 38.3 million. Add to this the unprecedented 4.8 million that the government defines as having left the labor force in the past two months—but who say they want a job. […]
The amount of CO2 being released by human activity each day fell by as much as 17% during the height of the coronavirus crisis in early April, a new study shows. This means daily emissions temporarily fell to levels last seen in 2006, the study says. In the first four months of the year, it estimates that […]
Western Civ’s most infamous encounter with pandemic disease, so far, was the big first wave of the Black Death that had a marathon run from 1346 to 1353. That bug was the real deal. It killed folks left and right, every age group, every social station, and it killed them ugly. Few who caught it […]
The deluge of bad numbers since the coronavirus struck is immense and growing. The tally that matters most—the body count from the virus—is headed for 90,000 by the end of the weekend and who knows where by the end of the month, to say nothing of the end of the year. These frightful losses are […]
As expected, the Department of Labor Thursday announced another tsunami of new claims for unemployment insurance benefits, a seasonally adjusted 2.98 million of them in the week ending May 9. That is slightly less than the previous week’s tally. But since coronavirus-related layoffs began in the second week of March, 36.5 million people have made new benefit claims. By […]
Eight weeks ago the first ripples of what would soon become a tsunami of new claims for unemployment insurance benefits began as the economy was shut down to keep the deadly coronavirus from spreading further. It was a weekly increase of about 70,000 from what had been new claims averaging around 215,000 for the past two years. […]
The global coronavirus pandemic continues to unfold at a staggering pace, decimating lives, livelihoods and the normal functioning of society, as well as interrupting energy demand and CO2 emissions. Previous Carbon Brief analysis showed that the crisis temporarily cut CO2 emissions in China by 25%, with emissions still below normal more than two months after the country entered lockdown. […]
The focus of the news today is on how many people will succumb to the ravages of the COVID-19 virus. The latest best guess is around 1 million people may die around the world because of it, with over 100,000 of those deaths occurring in the US. But no one knows for sure. The final […]
A few months back, I wrote two guides to disaster preparedness. They were meant as general references, assuming you may someday face a natural disaster or acute emergency. To many readers, they probably seemed abstract since there was no imminent danger at the time. But here we are, in the midst of a global emergency. […]
The cable news announced the other day that Covid-19 patients placed in critical care may have to be on ventilators for 21 days. Only a few years ago, I went in for an ordinary hip replacement. A month or so later, I got the hospital billing statement. One of the line-items went like this: Room and […]
50 years of increasing science denial on the political right wing has reached a tipping point in the USA. Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted 100,000 to 200,000 deaths in the country. Those deaths are hitting liberal areas now, but will switch to disproportionately impact red states in the coming months. By Michael Barnard Cleantechnica And that will have […]