Quick Updates 1 (3/18/2023)
This week's The Progressive Cafe is...Well, definitely updates on some of our previous articles, as well as other goings-on in the news!
Hello, friends,
Last week, we talked about how the U.S. has hamstrung itself in furthering investigations of war crimes and atrocities by Russia in Ukraine, by, say, the International Criminal Court. Oh, wait, the ICC did just issue warrants for Putin. Neat.
Otherwise, today, I come to you bearing ill tides.
…Well, I’m ill, at any rate. Not testing positive for CoVID, just kinda sick. So, we’re going to make this more of an update publication! What’s up with some of our various stories, besides last weel’s.
More Insulin Makers Have Cut Prices.
One of our earliest articles (as if these aren’t still early days) was about the costs of insulin. Just a couple weeks ago, we talked about Eli Lilly dropping their costs. Novo Nordisk followed suit this week. A third major player, Sanofi, just announced cuts, as well.
While it remains to be seen what gets cut, and to how expensive, it’s a welcome development.
SVB And Other Banks Failed.
…Look, this one’s easy enough for you to Google search, or maybe Bing if you like GPT, but suffice to say that there were some massive bank failures in the past week. Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Silvergate Bank all collapsed. That’s generally not a good thing for the economy.
The nature of the fiscal problem far exceeds the standard scope of our article about postal banking, and is still developing. Basically, a lot of people all wanted their money at the same time and the bank didn’t have it all available, so they failed to meet their obligations. This meant that businesses who had deposits with the banks couldn’t turn around and pay their workers, and, well…
Let’s just say the Federal government was quick to step in and guarantee those deposits in excess of the standard insurance level of $250,000. And, look, that might have been the right move.
It might also be nice if - sayyy - student loan debt were recognized as an equally-dangerous weight around the economy’s ankles, preventing it from truly breathing.
Energy Production And The Willow Oil & Gas Project.
This week, President Joe Biden kind of…Well, a combination Capitalism/Climate-Change thing by licensing the “Willow Project,” a huge oil & gas production facility. Granted, this is a project of reduced scope from the original proposal, and unlike the Keystone pipeline this would be oil extracted in the U.S. and used by the U.S..
That doesn’t make me a fan. I am, by my own nature, an environment-first kind of guy. That’s why I wrote an article about the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. You don’t need as much oil when you get your power from one of the safest power sources imagined in history. Is it perfect? No. But, it’d be nice if, instead of Biden’s answer to our energy needs being, “We need more oil!,” it was, instead, “We need new technologies in play!”
Other Important Shenanigans Taking Place In The World.
There has been some big news, today. For starters, perhaps in one of the biggest stories in American history, there’s talk of Trump actually being indicted by New York City prosecutors: So much so that Trump has made clear he will surrender if indicted. That’s quite unlike him.
France is in some kind of combination strike/riot over President Macron’s efforts to raise their retirement age. I should note that he’s raised it to 64. I should note that the American retirement age, for full benefits, is 67. I don’t think we’ve done a The Progressive Cafe about retirement, yet, but I’m open to comments and feedback.
Finally, to end things on a comparatively-positive note: Michigan is happily becoming a refuge for Queer people whose rights deserve to be protected. That’s awesome. It’s good to know that in a time when so many states are cavorting with cruelty, there are some places that will embrace empathy, instead.
Now, if only my New York would be quite so active with that…
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.