Seeds of the fiasco were planted in the 2020 Democratic primaries. We had some strong candidates: Sanders, Warren, Klobacher, Buttiegieg. They all quickly folded after Biden won the black vote in the South Carolina primary.
Good news from PA – I Think
Greetings from Altoona, PA. I arrived here Sunday, and I’ve been canvassing for Kamala Harris all this week, chronicling my adventures on YouTube. I’ve knocked on the doors of many registered Democrats. I work from 3 pm to 6 pm, so many people aren’t at home. But of the couple dozen or so I’ve spoken […]
The Campus Protests: Repugnant but Necessary
I’m a long-time mainstream moderate with rather unoriginal views about the Israel-Palestine conflict. For many years I didn’t even care about it – I’m Jewish, but the conflict seemed hopeless. Then I went to Israel and the West Bank in 2012 and spent about two years there on and off, and came out of it […]
Golden Venture: Marking 30 Years
At 2 a.m. June 6, 1993 a small cargo ship ran into a sandbar not far from a beach at the mouth of New York harbor. Then the passengers started to jump off. They plunged into the rolling waves, some clinging to plastic bags containing all their possessions. One after another they jumped. Soon two […]
Biden’s Unlikely Last Spurt
I was shocked that Biden pulled it together for the State of the Union. He not only managed to remain alert and coherent for 90 minutes, he delivered a powerful new case for a sort of Progressive populism that almost no other Democrats have been able to articulate. Some of the commentary has diminished the […]
The War: Immense Tragedy, Yet Hope and the Promise of a New Counter Narrative
War in Ukraine is shocking and appalling. It is a deep, life inflecting historical moment. Certainly for me, a child of the Cold War and someone who not long ago believed in a generally hopeful view about the likely progression of history. The uplifting dimension, of course, is that Ukraine seems to be winning, or […]
Capitalism Did Not Disrupt the Supply Chain
When I stand at the meat counter looking down at a pack of sirloin that is about 10% more expensive than it was two years ago, it does not occur to me to blame Larry Summers. Yet for David Dayen — a journalist whose work I admire — inflation is caused by free markets, and […]
Why Doesn’t the New York Times Care About Corruption?
When the New York Times editorial board sat down to interview Elizabeth Warren, the first question was about Hunter Biden. These 17 distinguished journalists proceeded to fire a bunch of zingers at the candidate, seeing if they could trip her up on hot button issues like immigration, trade, and Medicare for All. The transcript is […]
Confessions of a Russian Election Hacker
I am a Russian engaged in a campaign of fake political advertising designed to change the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. I operate in plain sight, yet I am having no problem deploying my campaign, which is aimed to a narrowly defined segment of the American population that I believe will determine the election. […]
“Cultural Backlash” and the Political Whiplash of Populism
Interesting blog posted at Stigler Center’s ProMarket on the latest political sciences theories about the rise of populism: “The main driver [of populism] is “cultural backlash” and, as far as economics plays a role, it is in a racialized manner—nativists believe that “aliens” are getting too numerous or powerful and that is why they think […]
Sifting Through the Warren Health Plans for Market-Oriented Elements
Warren has boldly pushed back on the critics who went after her for not having a plan to pay for Medicare for all. First she came out with a detailed plan for how to pay for it, then she produced another detailed plan for the three-year roll out process, and then we got the plans […]
Why Back a Leftist?
We get that Elizabeth Warren looks like a dangerous lefty who wants to destroy capitalism with massive tax hikes, huge new programs and a proliferation of meddlesome new laws and regulations. Yet we are taking a stand in her support. Her main theme is tackling corruption. We agree that it should the main priority of […]
A Recession Please!
OH GOD PLEASE GIVE US A RECESSION, AND FAST! This seems to be the underlying wish behind media saturation coverage of last week’s somewhat bad economics news. I think it’s biased wish-fulfillment reportage, and rather embarrassing, given the low unemployment rate and other strong economic indicators. However, I admit to having the same shameful wish, […]
Just control yourselves
What a pathetic mess in Congress around the Ilhan Omar controversy. I can’t be happy that the Dems are getting what they deserve for perpetuating sclerotic leadership — it’s too scary to think they may blow it and hand Trump a second term. The main thing going on here are overly hysterical fears of anti-semitism, […]
Border Ambush – Dems Beware, Pelosi’s Gaffe
See Pelosi’s “immorality” gaffe here. It’s mortifying to watch Trump play the Democrats with the border wall gambit. It’s high stakes stuff, and Trump has significantly raised the game with tonight’s speech and the planned photo op border tour set for Thursday. I really started to worry when I saw the “immorality” sound bite from […]
Trump Drug Plan: Cynical New Opiate for the Masses?
Trump’s conjuring of an immigrant terrorist mob marching for the border was a truly superior and well-time exercise in cynical, evil political manipulation. Yet today’s new drug pricing proposal — while less telegenic — may even be a few notches more evil and cynical. As with many cynical and evil political gestures, the Trump drug […]
Why don’t they just leave?
It’s been about a decade since we released Power and Control: Domestic Violence in America. All these years later, our original web site is still very active, showing hundreds of visits a month. I’ve always been proud of a video widget we introduced in 2010 — it offers a series of short video clips from […]
Attack of the Cyber Monsters
Over the past year or so, you could be tipsy over all the tipping points that have flown past in in the saga of Big Tech v. its detractors. Pre the 2016 Russia US election cyberwar, only a few fringe groups were worrying about Big Tech monopoly power. Then the election hacking came to light, […]
Family Alps Hiking Vacation: Switzerland, France and 1 Night in Italy
In our harshly divided partisan world, in which people who like to go to mountains are forever locked in conflict with those who prefer the beach, I’m a mountain person. For years I allowed children and other distracting influences to drag me to the ocean, but I’ve recently been making up for decades of sandy […]
Hypocrisy, cowardice, demagoguery and children in cages
The grotesque political charade of children in cages is just another consequence of decades of hypocrisy and cowardice on the issue of immigration. As everyone knows, we have an economy that depends on millions of immigrant workers, documented or not. In compassionate times, we look away. In times of anger, we demonize. Hypocrisy and cowardice […]
Dodd-Frank: Capture, Rapture and a Decade-Long Hostage Crisis
One of the world’s inevitabilities is regulatory capture: when regulators who are supposed to regulate an industry end up serving the industry’s interests, rather than the public’s. Given this immutable truth, outrage over the recent legislation amending the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulations strike me as somewhat beside the point. Dodd-Frank got taken hostage a long […]
Kroft, 60 Minutes and Google: I Am Big, It’s the Tech Platforms that Got Bigger
Kroft: Hi, I’m Steve Kroft. I’m a broad shouldered, good looking, well preserved older man with deep lines on my face, magnificent hair and enough of a serious, journalistic persona that you can tell that it’s important that I’m sitting here doing this assignment. I hope you enjoyed the commercial for a wonderful new pharmaceutical […]
European Socialized Medicine Causes High US Drug Prices????
It would be hard to come up with a slimier, more specious argument than the one made by the Trump administration in its pharmaceutical pricing initiative, launched last week. Yes, Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors has found the major culprit in high drug prices: and it is European socialism. The same perpetrators of government-funded single-payer […]
Jerusalem: Trump Gives the Finger, Pays off Adelson; Dozens and Dozens Get Shot and Killed
The Jerusalem embassy move is another crude, angry Trump gesture against the political correctness of the elites. It has the added plus for Trump of paying off campaign contributor Sheldon Adelson and the evangelical Mike Pence constituency driven by Millennial visions of the second coming. It’s doubly anti-PC because it is based on a cynical […]
Vampire Squid Mates With Coastal Elite Status Symbol That is World’s Most Valuable Corporation
Such great news that Goldman Sachs and Apple are teaming up to create a new Apple credit card! Yes, the great vampire squid that is “wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” has finally hooked up with the world’s most valuable company, in what is […]