Tag Archives: politics

Understanding the simple strategy for the 2018 elections Pretend for a moment that you are a political strategist. Your party is the party in power. The opposition has been enraged since the moment of your standard-bearer’s election. In the special and off-year elections since, they have been showing up in unprecedented droves for offices up and down the ticket, from Governor and US Senator to state representative and local council. The mid-term...

I was going to put up a short piece about wages this morning, but it has turned into a longer, more comprehensive piece, so in the meantime, here are some teasers to ponder. 1. There is a direct relationship between the economy generally, and child care costs specifically, and couples’ decisions about whether or not to have more children: The below graph comes from Vox.com. It is the top eight reasons that couples give for not having (more)...

by Jeff Soplop Bombing for Votes: Public opinion shifts during the Iraq war and implications for future conflicts Despite the recent summit in Singapore, which mostly made for good television and little substance, North Korea appears to be quickly ignoring any promises–whether implicit, explicit, or imagined–made to President Trump to dismantle its nuclear program. In Iran, Trump’s decision to withdraw from the six-party nuclear deal and the re-imposition...

The Fed just let Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs off the hook after both failed the required stress tests under Dodd-Frank. The stress test is supposed to predict whether banks and so-called banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs can weather a financial crisis. This is not an instance of if you remember in 2008, who could forget? Few TBTF had set aside the necessary reserves to back the tranched MBS and the more risky CDS/naked CDS. These were the...

(Dan here…Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) by Robert Waldmann Kung Fu Monkey Nobel Prize I just learned that Quinnipiak U polled asking people whether Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for his Singapore summit. I honestly thought that this was a great opportunity for Kung Fu Monkey to score again. Kung Fu Monkey is a blog where a dialogue was posted in which one of the bloggers confidently asserts that 27% of US adults are insane reactionaries....

(Dan here…late posting) by New Deal democrat On July 4, a consideration of Dred Scot On a 4th of July on which the President has expressed open longing for a lifetime term, and murmurings that a significant share of enlisted men in the military would be willing to overturn the Constitutional order should he call on them to do so, I’m not too interested in empty sloganeering celebrations. With the obvious exception of African slaves, the Constitution was...

Immigrant Child Abuse Agency (ICAA) In my Take Back ICE, I wrote: I would hope the leaders of ICE would speak up and strongly object to what the Demagogue in Chief has done with their agency but to date they seem to be intimated from doing what is right. Some good news: The political backlash against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has turned so intense that leaders of the agency’s criminal investigative division sent a letter last week to...

Drum honor role. I recently criticized Kevin Drum, so I am pleased to think especially highly of this post which I think you should read (also, as Drum says, always click the link especially if it is a vox.com link) My comment I am always impressed by your insights, but, that said, I think this post is important. In particular, I think you have coined an important word “government-ish” which belongs in the lexicon next to “truthiness”. As all 3 of you...

Take Back ICE U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was established 15 years ago: ICE was granted a unique combination of civil and criminal authorities to better protect national security and public safety in answer to the tragic events on 9/11. Leveraging those authorities, ICE has become a powerful and sophisticated federal law enforcement agency. My link was for a 2013 discussion of its laudable achievements during its first ten years. As a...

In his editorial “Say Hello to Your Boy. A Special Guy,” Josh Marshall at TPM had this to say: “When I first read the Times story I wasn’t sure whether the younger Kennedy (Justin), whose title was Managing Director and Global Head of Real Estate Capital Markets, would have been someone to actually make loans to someone like Trump as opposed to overseeing more complex or synthetic efforts like mortgage backed securities and such. But it turns out he...