Using crime and public safety as a political issue in an election year, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez: “’I don’t believe that police officers should be under this constant threat of lawsuits that will often cause them to pause, if they’re following their training, there should be something that protects them.’ The bill would protect cops and citizens from the ‘massive payouts that taxpayers are giving crooks and thieves who are hurt or injured by...
Read More »David Dayen reminds us opioid emergency ends in a couple weeks
Lest we forget: David Dayen’s Weekly Newsletter Politico notes today that the 90-day emergency declared actually ends in a couple weeks, and we’re in essentially the same place that we were before the declaration. Trump has not formally proposed any new resources or spending, typically the starting point for any emergency response. He promised to roll out a “really tough, really big, really great” advertising campaign to spread awareness about...
Read More »“I so much despise a man who blows his own horn, that I go to the other extreme.”
This column was written February 16, 2016 by Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe and is entitled; “The man who didn’t want to be president.” It was referenced in another column by Jeff Jacoby called “The Great I Am“. After hearing Trump’s “Like, being really smart” and a “stable genius” remarks, this column “kind of fits” in reply. I would hope our Democrat candidate going into 2018 is of the same ilk for personality. NEARLY 1,000 days stretch between this...
Read More »Why Inequality Predicts Homicide Rates Better Than Any Other Variable
By Maia Szalavitz via Naked Capitalism and cross posted from Evonomics; originally co-published at the Guardian and Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Why Inequality Predicts Homicide Rates Better Than Any Other Variable – research suggests that inequality raises the stakes of fights for status among men. The connection is so strong that, according to the World Bank, a simple measure of inequality predicts about half of the variance in murder rates...
Read More »The end game is privatization…vouchers are one step
Jennifer Berkshire pointed Peter Greene to: The election of Donald J. Trump as president offers the best opportunity in decades to shrink the size and power of government and increase individual liberty. So writes the Heartland Institute, a libertarian thinky tank, on a page devoted to all the Trumpian actions they approve of. This outfit was founded in 1984 by David H. Padden, a Chicago investor who had also been a director of the CATO Institute....
Read More »Evergreen: So Much Stranger than That
Evergreen: So Much Stranger than That I’m a professor at Evergreen State College, currently on leave. Last year I lived through the events that were captured on videotape and brought the college a lot of unwanted publicity. As a social scientist, long interested in organization theory and social movements, I found the experience grimly fascinating, an extraordinary case study. In my writing on it, I try to focus on understanding how such things could...
Read More »The Language of a Dictatorship
Worth a discussion at the least: By Masha Gessen Gessen is the author of nine books, including “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. The New Yorker 23 December 17 Donald Trump has scored a legislative victory with staggering costs. The price of the tax bill has to be measured not only in the loss American society will face in the increase in inequality, in the impact on public health, and the growth of the deficit, but also in the...
Read More »Republicans Reject the NFL, the CIA and the FBI
(Dan here…Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) Sunday, December 03, 2017 Republicans Reject the NFL, the CIA and the FBI I forget who said she never expected that, after the national divorce, liberals would get custody of the NFL. But it’s beyond that. Now Republicans reject the CIA and the FBI too. Donald Trump sometimes sounds like a paranoid 60s hippy claiming he is being persecuted by the evil FBI (except some of them really were persecuted).So...
Read More »October JOLTS report: a good post-hurricane rebound
The August and September hurricanes continue to make their impacts felt in the economic data. Yesterday’s JOLTS report for October, like the October and November jobs reports, shows a rebound from those impacts. The best way to look at the data is to average the last two months (and this will be true for the next JOLTS report as well, which will be best viewed by averaging all three months).Let’s start as usual by updating the disconnect between...
Read More »The End Of The “Islamic State.”
The End Of The “Islamic State.” There are two aspects of this debate, one about the term, “Islamic State,” and the other about the its application. So, until about a month ago the entity calling itself ” al-Dawla al Islamiyya fi al-Iraq wa al Sham(s),” was claiming to be the most important Muslim political entity in the world, the center of its “Caliphate” which claimed to be the only legitimate and supreme ruler and polltical state for the entire...
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