Tag Archives: politics

The American Economic Review is publishing an article by Samuel Norris, Matthew Pecenco, and Jeffrey Weaver that suggests parental incarceration has benefits for children: Every year, millions of Americans experience the incarceration of a family member. Using 30 years of administrative data from Ohio and exploiting differing incarceration propensities of randomly assigned judges, this paper provides the first quasi-experimental estimates of the...

So Much For May Day  Today is May Day. An ancient point of the Gaelic calendar marking spring, it was long marked by pagan fertility celebrations and rites, dancing around May poles and the like, with many variations on this in different countries. The day became associated with the worker’s movement in 1886 when in Chicago a movement for the 8-hour work day involved many demonstrations and strikes and ultimately a riot in Haymarket Square in...

Recall Senators McConnell’s and Graham’s strong opposition to the first COVID relief package? Said it was because they feared it might reduce the incentive of workers in their states to work for low wages; that’s really low wages as in less than a living wages. Mitch and Lindsey, and most of the present day republican party, are miners of poverty. Miners as in get every last possible cent possible out of the working class and personally wheelbarrow...

When a Guatemalan family borrows money to pay a coyote to, hopefully safely, smuggle one of their children into the United States, we might yet hear the talking heads refer to it as the search for a better life. Perhaps. More likely it is done out of deep despair. Despair from seeing year after year of failed crops, of failed government, of their country being a failed nation, …. That’s despair, as in the lack of any hope; despair as in desperate....

Commenter R.J.S. Ohio anti-fracking activist joins Greta Thunberg to decry fossil fuel subsidies at Earth Day Congressional Hearing A self-described “fracking refugee” from Belmont County, Ohio on Thursday joined Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on Earth Day to urge a congressional subcommittee to abandon subsidies to the fossil fuel industry when Congress passes its next infrastructure bill. Jill Antares Hunkler told the House...

A bit of Tom Sullivan @ Hullabaloo this day. Democrat Moe Davis lost the race last fall for the congressional seat in NC-11 to Republican Madison Cawthorn. The seat was left open when Rep. Mark Meadows vacated it to fumble around for the Trump White House. Moe Davis tweeted this morning in response to a local letter to the editor denying the assault on the Capitol even happened. And the Letter: “Denialism is alive and well “Tom...

The US may have crossed an important vaccination threshold On Monday I noted that in Chile, where there had been a severe renewed outbreak of coronavirus despite an aggressive vaccination program, cases had plateaued, and this had occurred “when over 35% of the population had received at least one dose of vaccine, and 20% were fully vaccinated.”Well, the recent upturn in cases in the US also seems to have plateaued: And guess what? The...

First to step out of the right hand corner was John Cornyn of Texas. Floated something he had read in Politico; it didn’t. None of Cornyn’s stings, stung. Departing the ring before the first was over; Cornyn mumbled something about butterflies and bees, or maybe it was something about Dinah. Next, Senator Lindsey of South Carolina would show his fellows how it was done; how to handle an uppity black women. Stepped in; wham never knew what hit him....

Where’s The Beef?  Well, as we increasingly understand how environmentally damaging producing beef is, quite aside from lots of other issues, the proper issue should probably be, “nowhere.”  But back in the early 1980s a fast food outlet, Wendy’s (I originally said Arby’s) ran an ad with this line that indicated that the beef was at their outlet while their competitors just did not have the real beef, what all potential customers really wanted. ...

Recently, in Windsor, Virginia, United States of America, a local police officer, Police Officer Gutierrez, pulled over Army Second Lieutenant Nazario; ostensibly for the lack of displayed license plate. As it was to turn out, a temporary plate was on display in the vehicle’s rear window. When Lt. Nazario slowly proceeded to a well lighted area in front of a convenience store, pulled over, and stopped, Police Officer Gutierrez, and a second, back up,...