An anonymous insider is reported as saying that Kushner advised the corrupter not to talk much about Covid-19 testing, or production of ventilators, lest that cause stock prices to decline.

The USPS says its package delivery fees for companies such as Amazon are chosen to maximize its revenue, but the numskull insists on a big increase.

If the USPS is right, the immediate effect would be a loss to Amazon, but in the longer term Amazon would switch to its own delivery vans. Instead, all other stores would be disadvantaged.

Here's a better idea. Instead of charging Amazon and similar companies more for deliveries, let's put a substantial tax on all shipments of products from stores to retail customers. That would benefit all local stores. Alternatively, put a substantial tax on all retail sales in which the store can identify the purchaser. That would encourage non-surveillance retail.

Another idea: make all companies pre-fund the retirement of their workers, as the Postal Service does now. Supposing that companies will pay the retirement funds from the income from their operations decades from now invites them to cheat their workers.

The strange history of the electoral college and how the US has elected presidents.

I was taught, many years ago, that the electoral college was planned so as to give large states extra per-capita power, to compensate for the extra per-capita power that small states get by having as many senators as a large state. But perhaps that was a rationalization based on the fact that the electoral college had that effect in the mid-20th century.

I support the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

*Afghan rivals’ power-sharing deal would promote official accused of rape and torture.*

To have any chance of peace, we have to help the actual rulers of Afghanistan make peace, even if they are torturers and rapists. The alternative to working with them would be for the US to impose new rulers on Afghanistan. That didn't work well before — it usually doesn't.

If we wanted to help Salafi Arabia make peace with Iran, or with the Houthis in Yemen, we'd have to help its actual ruler to do it — murderer though he is. Otherwise the peace agreement would not hold.

The purely economic value of the lives saved by shutting down business Australia, not counting the noneconomic value of human beings, is estimated at more than ten times the economic cost of the artificial shutdown.

The estimate distinguishes the cost of the artificial shutdown from the cost of decrease in activity that happens naturally as a consequence of illness from Covid-19 or fear of catching it.