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

Laugh at Sessions and Suddenly You Are in Federal Court?

Fairooz was detained after audibly laughing after Sen. Richard Shelby told senators at Sessions’ confirmation hearing that the then-Alabama senator had a record of “treating all Americans equally under the law.” That is laughable as Sessions is flying under the radar having learned you can not be so overt about racism and prejudice. Mind you, […]

Lead poisoning, gasoline lobbies and crime

by David Zetland (originally published at Aguanomics) Lead poisoning, gasoline lobbies and crime Most of you have probably heard how the residents of Flint, Michigan were exposed to unhealthy levels of lead in their water (actually, any level is considered unhealthy) due to political and managerial incompetence.* Then I read this article on the “lead-poisoned […]

The White Racist Cops of Chicago

An article by Nirej Sekhon in the American Criminal Law Review entitled Blue on Black: An Empirical Assessment of Police Shootings looks at 270 officer-involved-shooting incidents that occurred in Chicago between 2006 and 2014. His data comes from Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority (“IPRA”) summary reports of intentional officer-involved shootings. The article has interesting graphs. […]

Trickle-down, with the emphasis on “trickle”

Trickle-down, with the emphasis on “trickle” Since the turn of the Millennium, a torrent of corporate tax cuts has resulted in a trickle of investment growth. This morning Dean Baker objects to: the argument … that reducing corporate taxes will lead to more investment and thereby greater wage growth in the future. The data from […]

Self-selection and Multigenerational Mobility of American Immigrants

Last year I wrote a post noting that the income of group of immigrants in the US is correlated with the income of the country from where those immigrants hailed. I noted that this correlation is especially strong for immigrants in the US for the longest. I just stumbled on this paper from earlier this […]

Crime and Punishment

I stumbled on a blog post by Jerry Ratcliffe, who is a Professor of Criminal Justice and Director of the Center for Security and Crime Science at Temple University, Philadelphia, and a former police officer with London’s Metropolitan Police (UK). From one of this posts: Graph no. 2 is another image from my Intelligence-Led Policing […]