The Angry Bear

In a previous post, I argued that rising incomes and increasingly liberal attitudes may move opinion and policy in a progressive direction in the United States.  However, the Democratic victory in the 2018 election did not signal the start of a progressive “revolution”; it mostly reflected a predictable reaction to the unpopular policies of Trump and congressional Republicans.  Any major progressive shift in policy will be hard fought and will likely take...

Stolen from the comments section. Will Romney pay the price? I do not think so. He may get critiqued by the madman in the White House; but, I am not so sure if he can touch Romney. By EMichael Credit where credit is due. Despite the fact that he faces almost no repercussions for his vote, Romney deserves credit. Otoh, let us hope that Collins latest reptilian act costs her the Senate. “No, Romney set himself apart. Even if he is only concerned with the...

Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: January 28, 1869 Note: I have fallen a little behind, due to traveling. My apologies! I am making a concerted effort to catch up. Today’s installment is particularly important on the issue of gerrymandering. On January 28, Rep. Charles Stewart, a Republican from New York, spoke with reference to the proposed Amendment that had been voted out of the Judiciary Committee, which had been amended from: No State shall...

by New Deal democrat The long leading forecast up to 12 months Last week I posted my short term forecast through midyear. This morning my long term forecast through the 2nd half of 2020 was also posted at Seeking Alpha. As usual, clicking through and reading will help you see the longer term trends, and also rewards me a little bit for my efforts.

Will The “Impeachment Charade Fade Quickly”? We have not yet had all the final speechifying where GOP senators attempt to justify their votes to make this the first US federal impeachment trial in history (there have been 15, mostly of judges) not to have any witnesses, as well as the foregone acquittal.  But the battle over how it will be viewed in both the short and medium and long runs is already going on.  A sign of this is a column in yesterday’s...

December 2019 real personal income and spending Real personal income and spending are both coincident indicators. They don’t tell us where the economy is going, but they do give us a snapshot of how ordinary Americans are doing. In December, real income declined by less than -0.1%. Real spending rose by less than +0.1%: Figure 1 Real personal spending excluding government transfer payments is one of the four indicators used by the NBER to determine if the...

Via Matt Grossmann, a new paper by Patrick Fisher: Contemporary American politics is marked by an unusually substantial generation gap. This has important implications for the future of American politics as an overwhelmingly white and conservative generation, the Silent Generation, is being replaced in the electorate by much more diverse and liberal generations: the Millennial Generation and Generation Z. To project potential partisan changes in the...

She’s the reporter who asked Secretary Pompeo “Did you retaliate against NPR?” and what sort of message that sends to countries “whose governments routinely suppress press freedoms?”. I was already impressed that the US secretary of state was getting a lesson on respect for the free Press in Kazakhstan whose dictator used to be the general secretary of the communist party of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (and has been in office ever since and...

Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: January 27, 1869 (1) I have gotten a little behind in this project. Congressional activity picked up considerably in the last week of January 1869. Rep. Charles A.Eldridge (D-Wisconsin) addressed a civil rights bill by Massachusetts Representative Buckalew under the 14th Amendment as well as the proposed 15th Amendment: I have not the vanity to suppose that anything I say will cause them to hesitate or consider....