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

Paul Krugman: The cruelty of a Trump Christmas Medicaid, Work Reqmts, and Food Stamps Edition

This sets the tone in Michigan as the richest Republican controlled County of Livingston continues its attack on women along with the State of Michigan House and Senate using a petition to pass a veto-proof law limiting abortion without putting it forward on a ballot initiative. A tyranny of a minority imposing its will upon […]

How to Privatize the Post Office: Piece by piece, step by step

Steve Hutkins, a literature professor who teaches “place studies” at the Gallatin School of New York University. A few days ago, the Trump administration announced that one of its goals is to privatize the Postal Service. A private postal system, says the White House proposal, would deliver mail fewer days per week, shift to cluster […]

The Unreasonableness Of The Policy Defense Of Trump

The Unreasonableness Of The Policy Defense Of Trump In today’s (12/27/19) Washington Post, regular Trump defender, Mark A. Thiessen published a column, “The 10 best things Trump did in 2019”  This turns out to be mostly things either not worth defending or Thiessen, who simply never criticizes Trump, misrepresenting situations.  Here they are. 10. “He […]

A roadmap to a Democratic Senate supermajority

A roadmap to a Democratic Senate supermajority A worthy criticism made by many observers on the Democratic side is that most of the plans being painstakingly described by the Presidential candidates will come to nothing, because the filibuster in the Senate will kill them all. The GOP will then run on the “do nothing” socialist […]

Anand Giridharadas in a Dutch interview: Their Parliament’s Finance Committee called him

I found this interesting.  Mr. Giridharadas was invited to discuss his perspective regarding his themes of his book Winners take all.  He was invited by the Dutch Parliament’s Finance Committee to discuss his book.  All 6 parties showed up.  All had been given the book prior and several had read it.   This is a […]

Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: December 15, 1868

run75441: Catching up something we missed. NDD pointed out AB had missed a post on the 15th Amendment which happened two days before the last posted (17th) “Live Blogging  the 15th. “ Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: December 15, 1868 Sen Orrin S. Ferry (R-Conn), in the course of offering a joint resolution to lift the […]

Does Menzie Chinn Or Tyler Cowen Replace Mark Thoma?

Does Menzie Chinn Or Tyler Cowen Replace Mark Thoma? The retirement of Mark Thoma, whose Economist’s View has been praised on his retirement with having transformed the econoblogosphere back in the mid- noughties by linking regularly, daily in his heyday, to other blogs, including this one. Thanks to him when the big crash happened, there […]

Political leanings through time for birth cohorts

Political leanings through time for birth cohorts A chart on “political preferences by generation” from Pew Research has been making the rounds in the past few days. Here it is: Figure 1 This chart tells the simplistic story that older generations are more conservative than young ones. It’s considerably misleading. After all, how did the […]

Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: December 17, 1868

Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: December 17, 1868 In the Senate, Senators Dixon and Ferry, both Republicans from Connecticut, continued the debate from several days prior concerning a federal imposition of African-American voting rights on the States: Dixon: [M]y colleague … proposes to amend the Constitution of the United States in a manner which to me […]