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A Feb. 2011 NBC/Wall Street Journal shows only a small number of Americans think cuts to Medicare are necessary to "significantly reduce" the deficit. Only 18% favored cuts, 54% opposed cuts to Medicare to reduce the deficit. Only 22% said cuts to Social Security were needed, 49% said they were not needed. Tea party supporters by a 2 to 1 margin said significant cuts to Medicare were "unacceptable." What measures should be taken to put the entitlement programs on a sound financial basis? On this point over half of the people polled said they favor increasing the retirement age to 69 years by 2075, up from 66 now. A larger number said they support reducing Social Security and Medicare payments to wealthier Americans. Experts say these two measures could eliminate 60% of the underfunding of Social Security. On the issue of collective bargaining rights of public workers, this poll shows 62% of the people polled oppose effforts to weaken collective bargaining. This is similiar to the CBS/New York Times poll results of Feb 24, 2011 on this issue. See the group for this. This poll show a big yellow caution light for Republicans zealously advocating cuts to entitlements. Both polls show lack of public support for reducing the collective bargaining rights of public workers....

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Improving relations between Zelensky of Ukraine and the DJT administration by September 25, 2025. US-EU coordination as Russia continues it's offensive in Ukraine in August-September 2025 following a meeting of Putin with DJT in Alaska which failed to lead to a compromise.

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A reminder that the Naiton's aging infrastruture needs replacing with new infrastructure. Lead pipes are replaced in Flint, Michigan, the project completed on June 30, 2025. The contamination of lead pipes created a national sense of unease about how dangerous the situation has become.

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Argentina's new president takes over a failing economy in 2019. Mr. Fernandez declared a public emergency until 2020. A legislative package recently passed includes tax increases on the wealthy, tax relief for the poorest, a 30% tax on foreign currency transactions abroad, and a currency cap of $200 per person per month imposed by the previous Macri administration.  About 70% of new revenues will go to social programs, including free food vouchers for two million of the poorest Argentines. About 40% of the people in Argentina are in poverty, according to the World Bank, a shocking figure for a country that should be doing better given its natural resources and agricultural resources. The economy is suffering from hyper inflation at over 50%, jumping external debt at 90% of GDP. Total debt is $332 billion including a $57 billion IMF loan. About half the total debt is in foreign currency and is hard to service now that foreign currency reserves have fallen from $66 billion to $43.5 billion. The debt restructuring strategy now is to delay as much of the $70 billion of repayments due before the end of 2020.  ...

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Angela Merkel loses a local election in her region of Mecklenburg Pomerania in Germany. The CDU comes in third at 19% following the AfD anti-immigration party with 21%. The Social Democrats party gets over 31%. Commentators say this region is more likely to take an anti-immigrant stance, compared to other parts of Germany. The next elections are on Sept 18 in Berlin, which is very different from parts of the former communist East Germany. The CDU has embraced the themes of "homeland," and public safety, and Merkel says about the decision a year ago on immigration-"it was not about opening the border to everyone- it was about not shutting it to those who made their way to us from Hungary, on foot and in great need of help." Merkel is likely to regain her footing with voters, as the vote in Mecklenburg was more of a protest vote and Merkel has adapted current policy to check immigration. Peter Tauber, general secretary for the CDU, Merkel's party, sees the vote also reflecting anger of those who have lost out in the moves to globalization, and not just about immigration. ...

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The Crown Season 4 in the latest series of Netflix The Crown shows Diana, Prince Charles in a different light, and Margaret Thatcher, covering that period, the Falklands war and ending with Thatcher's resignation in 1990. Morgan gives a critical eye to Thatcherism and 1980's unemployment.

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New five year broadcasting deals for the Indian Premier League that will bring in 5 billion pounds over five years. With 74 matches this comes to 14 million pounds per match, a record for world cricket and bigger than soccer. Disney's Star network gets television rights, TV18 and Paramount venture gets the digital rights. Much of this revenue will be used by India's cricket organization Board of Control for Cricket in India to build infrastructure and improve the experience of fans, spruce up facilities.

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Bhupinder Bhalla, the Secretary, Ministry for Renewable Energy in India, talks to The Hindu's Jacob Koshy about India's plans for solar panel manufacturing. He says a key bottleneck is reliance on Chinese made components such as poly-silicone wafers. Manufacturing these components in India is key for the health of the solar ecosystem in India. Once this is established- and Bhalla goes over the action being taken- India will be able to export solar panels by 2026. He expects 40GW to be fully commissioned in the next 2 years.

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The renewable energy and coal projects of India's Gautam Adani are shown here in this report Emily Schmall and Hari Kumar in the NYT. The Financial Times looked into Mr. Adani's projects and financing and found that much of it comes from a scale of risk taking and business innovation, timely delivery that few businesses in India have an affinity for. As a result he has taken on a role of lead innovator for projects of scale in both coal and renewable solar energy for India.

 

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Democrat Gretchen Whitmer wins the race for Governor in Michigan with a double digit lead. Democrats also win the state house and Senate. This report in Politico looks at Whitmer and how she has helped change Michigan since the days of Trump's win in 2016. For Whitmer it is about delivering on good roads, infrastructure, investments in electric car production, and protecting women's rights. Michigan is on track to have fixed more than 16,000 lane miles of roads and 1200 bridges, according to her office.  

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This report in The Financial Times citing official data, says one third of farmers in three provinces, Jilin, Liaoning, Heilongjiang lack the needed agricultural inputs. Authorites sealed off villages to fight the pandemic. The three provinces produce 20% of China's foodgrains. This is the result of strict Covid policies followed in China to control covid surge. 

According to Jilin government one third of farmers lack sufficient fertilizer three weeks before planting begins. This could affect China's efforts for self sufficiency in foodgrains.

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What Joanna Stern doesn't say in the title when she says she passed is that she got C grades and could not contribute much to the AP English class she joined at a Secaucus, N.J. high school class. Grammarly to check grammatical and spelling errors is one thing and English essay writing using AI tools is another. Most of all it is about not learning even when it can be difficult. And some literary works such as Kafka's are difficult for most of us.

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Very little of the heavy rain and storm runoff from floods is being captured in California which has experienced many dry seasons and shortages of water, says this opinion in the WSJ. California has experienced 2 seven year droughts in the 20's and the 40's. The problem very little investment in public works in a state that was extravagantly spending on tech, starving essential infrastructure of spending. Economic textbooks talked of crowding out of private spending and investment, now we have crowding out of public spending on infrastructure.

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The Guardian Interview with Chris Whipple, author of The Fight of His Life, on the Biden presidency. It says the inner circle is bullish about Biden's mental acuity and ability to govern. It looks at the changing relationship of Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris and cites Biden's view of Harris as "a work in progress." During the first year they were close. After the assignment for the southern border Harris came under severe Republican scrutiny and she is shown as not keen on that assignment.

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Germany's Siemens and chancellor Scholz say the lack of a turbine from Siemens is not the reason why Russia is reducing supplies of Nordstream pipeline gas. The turbine is ready to be shipped to Russia if Russia wanted it. 

Mr. Scholz is looking at keeping 3 remaining nuclear plants operating which would meet 6% of Germany's needs. A review of nuclear plant operating condition is being done to make the decision to continue with nuclear energy and not phase it out completely.

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Both Valerie Pecresse of the Republicains and Anne Hidalgo of the Socialists each win a small share of the vote. Pecresse less than 5% in France's presidential elections, Anne Hidalgo about 2%. These 2 parties dominated French elections for the postwar period for 6 decades. They have stumbled into a complete loss showing how they failed to connect with voter's concerns about high cost of living, jobs, manufacturing outshoring, neglect of infrastructure, and neglect of rural areas, much the same as in the US.

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Modi's meeting with Pope Francis planned for half an hour lasts for an hour. Both leaders discussed climate change, inequality, upward mobility, and recovery from the coronavirus. Mr. Modi gave Pope Francis a silver candelabra and a book, The Climate Climb: India's strategy, action, and achievements. The Pope gave Mr. Modi a collection of his main teaching documents and a bronze medallion featuring a tree and the words in Italian "The desert will become a garden."  Modi invited Pope Francis to visit India.

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The US president's son, Joe Biden's son, talks about his struggles after the loss of his brother to cancer in 2015, in this rare story told in The Times. Things went downhill he says after that and it was the strong support of Joe Biden and the love of his brother even after death that helped him recover. Here he tells of the love of his parents and family that helped him and the family pull together through a difficult period.

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Awesome pictures of the lunar eclipse in the night sky on Wednesday, May 26, 2021. It combined a supermoon, lunar eclipse, and a blood moon. Blood moon refers to the reddish hue as light filters through the earth's atmosphere. In native American cultures this is referred to as the flower moon. Lunar eclipses happen when the Earth passes between sun and moon, blocking the sunlight that normally illumines the moon's grayish white cratered surface. The next one is on May 16, 2022.

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The Senate election in Georgia with Governor Kemp running for the Republican party will show how much support there is for Mr. Trump's idea that the 2022 presidential election was stolen by Democrats. Mr. Kemp has avoided getting into Mr. Trump's contention that the election was stolen, preferring to focus on good governance for the state and local issues relating to the economy. Kemp is likely to be the Republican nominee for the election to the US Senate and is well positioned to win the Senate seat.

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Real Madrid player Rodrygo is a product of training at Brazil's club Santos. His father is a manager of soccer teams in Brazil, and retired to focus on Rodrygo's career. He was just 11 when he signed with Nike ,a younger age than Neymar at age 13 who is also a product of Santos club training. The support of his dad has played a large part in his development as a player.

He is expected to play a big role in the Champions League final with Liverpool.

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Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon leave the Tories and the Scottish Nationalist Party weaker than before providing Labour an advantage in England and Scotland after ten years of austerity and Scottish nationalist policies. Labour's loss of Scotland to the SNP made it hard for the party to win a parliamentary majority in elections. Boris Johnson appealed to Labour's base in the north of England without any significant policy accomplishments to back it up. All this is changing with Labour sweeping the local elections recently.

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Ashwini Bhide, Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation's managing director has provided extraordinary leadership to the organization building India's most advanced Metro. Here she describes the new island concept incorporated in the rail platforms. About 1.7 million passengers will use this line daily, the Colaba-Bandra- Seepz Metro line.She says at each station 20,000 square metres of space has been created with this innovative island concept. There are 26 stations that are part of the Metro 3 line. Phase 1 begins by December 2023 from BKC to Aarey.

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This analysis in The Guardian says prime minister Sunak's strategy in Britain to water down net zero goals and gasoline car phase out deadlines is not likely to prove popular with voters. Mr. Sunak is looking for ways to revive Conservative fortunes after 13 years in power and Labor under Keir Starmer 15-20 percentage points ahead in polls for much of the year. It also comes as Liz Truss is gaining some support inside the Conservative party, leaving Conservatives divided after Boris Johnson's departure.

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The story of GM's self driving car Cruise stemming from its acquisition of a startup in California in 2016. It started with GM perceiving a threat from driverless cars and ride hailing firms. After the acquisition GM's share price rallied. Investments came in from Softbank and other companies. The company planned a robo-taxi service to test its cars in American cities. This story covers the accidents as GM pushed for it too early till California pulled out of the program.