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

My Near-Out-of-Body Experience While Watching the Debate Last Night: Hearing Clinton’s Answer To the Supreme Court Nominees Question

OMG. It came so late in the debate—the third-last question, the second-last on policy agenda, less than 10 minutes before the end. Asked what she would be looking for in selecting her Supreme Court nominees, she began not with a culture-wars answer or by referencing the need for diversity among the justices as concerned with […]

The British, the Germans and the Irish: A Look at How Traditions Survive Emigration

by Mike Kimel The British, the Germans and the Irish: A Look at How Traditions Survive Emigration Between 1921 and the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, about 70% of those admitted into the US came from the UK, Ireland, and Germany. In a roundabout way, I want to discuss what that has meant for […]

My email to a reluctant-voter friend whose pending federal-court appeal may well be determined by the election outcome before any new judges are appointed to that court

A friend of mine who is the appellant in federal litigation whose outcome she cares dearly about lives in a large swing state in which the presidential race and the Senate race are very close.  She is not particularly political and does not follow political news, other than what’s on her Facebook feed, and has […]

 “Wrestling With Racism – Are These Questions Racist?”

Authored by Mike Kimel Here’s a story widely reported in England from earlier this year: A black former soldier is suing the Ministry of Defence after he was injured when his hands were exposed to temperatures of -30C during training. Abdoulie Bojang, 30, is suing for £200,000 after he suffered career-ending injuries when he was […]

Why does Krugman hold Clinton and her campaign harmless for . . .

the public’s cluelessness about Trump’s policy agenda vs. her own? PHILADELPHIA — On Wednesday night, the Harvard Institute of Politics pulled together a focus group of eight millennial voters from the Philadelphia area, and a small group of journalists watched. One of the millennials supported the Green Party presidential candidacy of Jill Stein. The rest professed […]

Bernie Sanders on MichiganRadio’s (local NPR’s) Stateside yesterday:

“Get beyond personalities” and focus on real issues. Bernie’s awesome.  You can read the article about his radio interview, and watch his rally speech at the U-M campus in Ann Arbor yesterday, here. Go, Bernie!

President Paul Ryan

I’ve said since last winter, when it first became fairly clear that Trump likely would win the nomination, that Trump hadn’t taken over the GOP, but rather that it was the other way around: Trump is the ultimate Paul Ryan/Heritage Foundation/Koch Borthers Trojan Horse. I was right. And it’s now, literally, official. Meanwhile, large numbers […]

ANTITRUSSSSST! (Dear Hillary: In a well-received economics-themed speech in Toledo on Monday, you mentioned ANTITRUST LAW and ARBITRATION CLAUSES. Please, please do so also at Sunday’s debate.)

Clinton also said she would push for new steps to crack down on “forced arbitration” fine print that prevents workers and consumers from suing companies, proposals aimed at reducing market concentration and increasing competition, and curbing tax rules that gave corporations and the super-wealthy, like Trump, tax breaks not available to ordinary taxpayers. — After […]

Kellyanne Conway Admits That Trump’s Domestic Policy Agenda Is Circa 1980s and Early-to-Mid-2000s.

That Is, the Very Opposite of a “Change Agenda.” Clinton Should Quote Her On That. “His last tweet last night was how excited he was, how proud of him he was. They talked last night. I talked to Mr. Trump during the debate several times,” [Kellyanne] Conway said of Trump’s response to Pence’s debate performance. “I think […]

Punctuality Today v. GDP per Capita Tomorrow; A Look at a Few Countries

Authored by Mike Kimel In this post, I want to demonstrate the importance of a specific cultural trait, namely punctuality, on the economy.  The difficulty, of course, is coming up with a good measure of punctuality, and in particular, one that isn’t regularly gamed. Digging around, I found a paper entitled The Pace of Life […]