Tag Archives: politics

Arkansas is the only state where landlords can file criminal charges rather than civil complaints against tenants for falling behind on rent. Gee, whata surprise! As picked up from Crooks and Liars and originally reported by ProPublica – When Falling Behind on Rent Leads to Jail Time, ProPublica. An Arkansas prosecutor has been fired after speaking out against a 119 year old law jailing people who are behind on rent and mostly impacting female, Black, and...

George Lakey has played a part in direct action campaigns for over six decades. He has recently retired from Swarthmore College. Some of history giving him a background in social issues include being arrested in the civil rights movement and most recently in the climate justice movement. George has facilitated 1,500 workshops on five continents and led activist projects on local, national and international levels.  Waging Nonviolence  Briefly and what I...

— Preface Donald J. Trump is not on this list only because he is much so more than odious. — Grover Norquist* Because; in any list there has to be a number one. Though it was tough choosing a number one, no one is more deserving. Using one’s intelligence to bully, to manipulate others, is the most odious of things any human can do. Bastard even had them sign an oath not to raise taxes lest he primary them.His tax scam wasn’t even his idea. He got it...

Yemen: More Damage To World Peace And Security Due To Trump Wrecking Everything As He Exits Michigan certified its vote results for Biden, and now crucially Emily Murphey at the GSA has agreed and now recognized officially that at least Joe Biden should be allowed to transition properly as has always happened in the past normally. But in his lame duckery, still denying his obvious loss, Donald Trump is trashing everything in sight.  Very serious...

Benjamin Franklin vs. John Locke on the Legislature vs. the Executive An initial note: there is very little economic data this week. Some house price information gets updated tomorrow, and then on Wednesday we get a slew of data, including Q3 corporate profits, jobless claims, new home sales, durable goods orders, and personal income and spending. That’s probably worth two days’ of posts, at least one of which will probably be at Seeking Alpha. Shorter...

Janet Yellen Will Be Treasury Secretary  I have long been a great fan of hers as well as knowing her and her husband, George Akerlof, personally.  Back in 2009 I was the first person to call for her to be named Fed Chair. I am very pleased with this appointment.  This is as good as it gets. (For those who wanted Lael Brainerd, we need her at the Fed where all the current governors are Trump appointees other than her).  Elizabeth Warren also would have...

Democrats: the “less unpopular” party No economic news today  (Nov. 16). I hope to put up an updated Coronavirus Dashboard (hint: it’s pretty unremittingly awful) later. In the meantime, I wanted to add a postscript to yesterday’s post about the Democrats’ problem obtaining a durable electoral majority. It occurred to me after I put up yesterday’s piece is that the essence of what I wanted to say in response to the meme that “Democrats have won 7 of the...

Josh Hawley is running for president; has been since he was big enough to walk. On the night of the November 2020 election, Josh Hawley, Junior Senator from Missouri, tweeted that henceforth the republican party was the party of the working class; and the democratic party was the party of the elites. Is Senator Hawley right? Josh Hawley will be forty-one on December 31, 2020. The only Republican Presidents he’s known were Reagan, Bush, Bush and Trump. The...

The Democrats’ problem in the Senate, explained One of the memes that I have read quite a few times in the past week is that the Democrats have won 7 of the last 8 Presidential elections and that the institutions of electoral government discriminate against them. A review of the actual results of the last 8 elections does not quite support that assertion. In only 4 of those 8 elections has either party mustered a majority of voters; in the other 4 the...

Biden Won Because Of White Men?  OK, I confess I am mystified.  An article in The Guardian by Musa al-Gharbi looks at the data now available on voting patterns in the US presidential elections of 2016 compared to 2020.  Almost all groups moved towards being more pro-Trump, including both Black men and women, Hispanic men and women, Asian men and women, and white women.  The only group that moved away from Trump was white men, with his margin declining...