Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Hate Crimes, Plus a Question for US Senate Candidate Kamala Harris

Authored by Mike Kimel Let’s start with the lede: from what I can tell, according to Kamala Harris (California State Attorney General and candidate for the US Congress), the ISIS-inspired massacre of 14 people in San Bernardino was not a hate crime.   And now, the story, with some meandering around interesting facts.  The Los […]

 “Immigration and Job Creation at the State Level”

Mike Kimel continues his discussion on how Immigration impacts Job Creation. In this post, I am looking at how the percentage of a state’s population that is made up of immigrants affects job creation.  After all, we hear from some quarters that immigrants create jobs, and from others that immigrants take away jobs that would […]

Mike Kimel vs. Yves Smith

I and many others, including Yves Smith, waded into the thicket of Mike Kimel’s provocative generic and specific-reasons-for-the-generic claims in his post here earlier this week titled “Negative Effects of Immigration on the Economy.”  I and others, including academic economist Barkley Rosser, commented in replies in the Comments thread to Mike’s post.  Yves did so on […]

Police Killings, Gender and Race, Part 2

by Mike Kimel Police Killings, Gender and Race, Part 2 A few weeks ago, I had a post looking at police killings of civilians. Using statistics on police shootings, homicides, and demographics, I reached the controversial conclusion that: contrary to popular perception, the data seems to show that Black people are less likely to be […]

Explaining Trump’s Appeal, Part 1

by Mike Kimel Explaining Trump’s Appeal, Part 1 The reason Donald Trump has been unstoppable so far is that Republicans, and now Democrats as well, don’t seem to understand what motivates Trump voters.  The single most important driver is, as (almost) always, the economy.  The table below illustrates the problem: Figure 1 As the graphs […]

A Key Reason America is No Longer Great: The privatization of state and (especially) local governments, in both the services they provide and in the way these governments (especially the local ones) are funded. [UPDATED.]

Coberly/ July 21, 2016 10:26 am mike instead of begging to differ, why don’t you try to explain your case better? it sounds to me like you are arguing that ignoring traffic violations in black neighborhoods will result in more black on black crime including homicide. that could well be the case, but i don’t think […]