Hard Ball

SHORT TAKES: A Starbucks Caveat; Did Merck Cause Omnicron?; Unions Are Good For Everyone--The Data

Hi, all: Happy Holidays! Be safe. Take Omicron very seriously and don’t buy the “mild” symptoms meme—which, at the very least, tells us nothing at this point about Omicron’s *long COVID* impact.

LONG TAKE

I say: Bring. It. On. If Joe Manchin—deeply corrupt, thoroughly bought off by corporate interests—has the temerity to scream “debt crisis!” (under the false notion that government doesn’t have money) and the utter audacity to deny lower-income people basic protections and, while he lives on a yacht and drives a Maserati, smear people, including his own constituents, with the slanderous accusation that poor people will use a modicum of government aid to…buy drugs…—let’s live by his credo of penny pinching…

Every single Senator, no matter the party, spends a ton of time making sure their local pet projects back home get funded with federal dollars. They do so by drawing up a laundry list of projects and tucking the projects into the appropriations bills that make their way, each year, th…