Jonathan Zasloff asks at The Reality-based Community blog New Directions in GOP Political Economy Quite subtle, actually: Public-sector collective bargaining is unhealthy and distorts democracy because it enables workers to influence the government which negotiates with them; but Unlimited and secret corporate political campaign contributions are necessary to democracy because they enable corporations to influence […]

Some catching up on health care reform progress makes sense as we keep in mind these posts from Beat the Press Dean Baker writes: Second, the story of massive huge future budget deficits has little to do with aging. It is a story of a broken private health care system. If the United States paid […]

By Noni Mausa Wiggle Room In a claustrophobic economy where the lions share of the fruit of citizens’ efforts is funneled to a small number of beneficiaries, where institutions intended to intervene on their behalf have been rejigged to work backwards, what can the little guy do to gain some wiggle room? The poorest Americans […]

by Mike Kimel Another Look at Keynesianism and the Great Stagnation Cross-posted at the Presimetrics blog Last week I had a post noting that the US government followed more or less naive Keynesian policies (whether on purpose or not I cannot say) from the early 1930s to the late 1960s. The post also notes that […]

by Beverly Mann Washington Post writer R. Jeffrey Smith posted a comment to my post yesterday, providing a link to an article by him published in the paper about a letter that a large ad hoc group of law professors sent to the House and Senate Judiciary committees yesterday recommending legislation that would extend to […]

An opinion piece in the NYT points us to new docs on former President Eisenhower: LAST week the National Archives released a trove of drafts and notes that shed new light on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warned America about the “military-industrial complex.” More can be found here. On Oct. 31, […]

by Mike Kimel Cross posted at the Presimetrics blog. I just came upon The Pentagon Labyrinth Its a very readable, very informative collection of essays about national defense in the United States.  The essays are written by ex-defense personnel (some of whom were very influential) and journalists who cover the military, and to top it […]

by Linda Beale More on the Mortgage Mess As our banking giants engaged more and more in speculation, and as the shadow banking system saw a way to make money off of people’s bad financial decisions by betting against subprime loans, the financial crisis took off.  So redressing the problems that caused the crisis shouldn’t […]

I sent this Salon article on the Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas The bigger Clarence Thomas scandal by Ben Adler to Beverly Mann asking her what she thought of the article. The article discusses the possible conflict of interest regarding Judge Thomas’s ruling on Citizen’s United and his failure to disclose his wife’s earnings: Experts […]