Tag Archives: politics

A thought for Sunday: the most important issue in the 2016 election was . . . This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for several months. For a while after the election last year, there was a debate about whether the “economic anxiety” in the (white) working class was the most important factor vs. was it simply a matter of racism. The consensus has nearly settled on the narrative that racism was decisive, to the point where “economic anxiety” has...

by Peter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Limited Art of Interpretation Among the least persuasive writers on contemporary politics, for me, is Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Mind you, I often agree with him, but only because I agreed with him before reading him.  If I go into a piece of his with a different perspective, nothing he says has an effect on me. Now, if I were intellectually stubborn, the sort of person who rarely...

Via the Guardian comes this note from well funded groups: Conservative campaign aims to strike ‘mortal blow’ on government unions  ‘A once-in-a-lifetime chance to reverse the failed policies of the American left’

“I was always very candid with my patients. They want to know that you are working for them, not someone else. We made certain they knew that.” Tom Price, MD – Secretary of HHS Republicans, the Trump administration, led by Graham and Cassidy are moving forward to defund and cripple the ACA bringing millions of people back to when states decided who could have a smidgen of healthcare and who could not. This comment by Dr. and Secretary of Health Tom...

byPeter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) Carbon Gridlock Redux in Washington State A year ago—it already seems like another era—an initiative to set up a carbon tax in Washington State, I-732, was defeated by the voters.  The proposal was to use the money for tax reductions in accordance with the standard economic view that taxing “bads” rather than goods generates a double dividend.  I disagree with that (I think the deadweight loss case...

by Peter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) Another Year of Equity at Evergreen The following email was forwarded to me and many other Evergreen faculty: On [date deleted], students, staff and faculty of The Evergreen State College will hold a Re-Convocation Rally on Red Square to express and affirm their commitment to goals of equity, inclusion and success for all in pursuit of higher education. The rally is organized by Staff and Faculty...

by ProGrowthLiberal (originally published at Econospeak) Does Single Payer Pay for Itself? Was this the message of the title of the latest from Dean Baker: The economies of a single system can be viewed as analogous to the Social Security system, which has administrative costs that are less than 1/20th as much as privatized systems in places like Chile and the United Kingdom. The analogous institution in the health-care sector is of course Medicare, which...

Guest Author: Alan Collinge, StudentLoanJustice.Org,Both Alan and I have written various posts on the student loan crisis. Alan has been featured on Angry Bear Blog from time to time. If you are in college and looking for something worthy to fight for today; as a student, you should consider the student loan issue. Student loans and how they are administered are the national injustice of our time reaching threatening proportions and impacting the...

How to kill Social Security in 2 easy steps Here’s Kevin Drum advocating for step 1:  the best way to address retirement security is to continue reforming 401(k) plans and to expand Social Security—but only for low-income workers. Middle-class workers are generally doing reasonably well, and certainly as well as they did in the past. We don’t need a massive and expensive expansion of Social Security for everyone, but we do need to make Social Security...

Election Tax Returns In an effort to force our present president when running for re-election and future presidential candidates to release income tax returns, California passed SB249 Disclose Act. California became the first state to require presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on the state ballot. Lawmakers sent Gov. Jerry Brown AB249 Friday requiring candidates to publicly share five years of returns. This comes after...