Running late with the Weekly Digest again this week.    I should have it done some time tonight.  Some links in the interim:

• Matt Taibbi, Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes in From the Cold
• Brad DeLong, What We Got Here Is a Failure to Do the Government Debt Amortization Arithmetic…

• Carli Lloyd’s goal from midfield in women’s World Cup final last weekend.
• Bernie Sanders, Why Not?
• Tour de France [Ed.: The other day they finished on a uphill grade of >10%, probably more like 15%.  Sprinting up a 15% grade?!  Amazing.]

Must Read

• Matt Taibbi, Why Are So Many Pundits Trashing the Pope?
• Peter Dreier, Is Bernie Sanders Too Radical for America?
• K. Sabeel Rahman, Curbing the New Corporate Power [Ed.:  Rahman’s piece is worth reading in and of itself but it’s the responses which make it a “must read”; see in particular Dean Baker’s.]
• Joseph Stiglitz, Europe’s Attack on Greek Democracy

Should Read

• Mike the Mad Biologist, Glimpses of Our Dystopian Neo-Liberal Future: Electrical Power in Virginia
• Robert Pear (NYT), Health Insurance Companies Seek Big Rate Increases for 2016 [Ed.:  It’s great that people who wouldn’t otherwise have coverage are getting it because of the ACA.  Unfortunately, the ACA doesn’t significantly address cost.  We spend a ton of money on health care compared to nations with comparable life expectancies.  The ACA has no direct mechanism for reining that it.]
• David Atkins, Another Opportunity to Test Who is Right About the Economy
• Yael T. Abouhalkah, Dismal budget news just blocked out the sun in Gov. Sam Brownback’s Kansas
• Eric Wilbur, Pawtucket’s McCoy Stadium endangered for no good reason [Ed.:  I haven’t been to McCoy in probably 20 years but I enjoyed it even pre-renovation.]

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Must Read

• Lance Mannion, When I was your age, there used to be conservatives who were actually conservative
• Beth Macy (NYT), Who’s Speaking Up for the American Worker
• Alexis Goldstein, 13 Senate Democrats Roll Over on Trade Deal…for Nothing [Ed.:  Nice work, assholes.]

Should Read

• Dean Baker, Rich People’s Rules and the TPP
• brooklynbadboy, TPP fight illustrates Left’s depth problem
• Robert X. Cringely, The U.S. computer industry is dying and I’ll tell you exactly who is killing it and why  [Ed.:  See Note 1 below.]
• Dean Baker, The 2001 Recession Actually Was Really Bad News
• Andrew Gelman, When the counterintuitive becomes the norm, arguments get twisted out of shape
• Kaiser Fung and Andrew Gelman, What’s So Fun About Fake Data?

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On vacation the past few days so the Digest will be a bit late.   Check back Sunday night.   In the interim, Lance Mannion’s “When I was your age, there used to be conservatives who were actually conservative.” is a excellent complement to Brad DeLong’s, “What About Today’s Republican Party?” from last week.

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Must Read/Watch

• Pope Francis, Laudato Si’
• Daniel Little, Science and Decision
• Brad DeLong, What About Today’s Republican Party?
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, Take Down the Confederate Flag—Now
• Jon Stewart, Charleston Church Shooting

Should Read

• Garry Wills, Who’s Afraid of Pope Francis?
• Owen West (NYT), Why Obama’s Plan to Send Advisers to Iraq Will Fail [Ed.:  West addresses military tactics.  He does not address the “And then what?” question which follows should Iraqi+US forces prevail in driving out ISIS.]
• NYT Editorial Board, Massachusetts Takes On a Failing School District [Ed.:  Lawrence has been a mess for as long as I can remember.  If this is the beginning of a turnaround that’s great – bottle it and export it as appropriate.]
• Nick Hanauer and David Rolf, Shared Security, Shared Growth
• Daniel Costa, [Sen. Orrin] Hatch should fix H1-B visa program instead of expand it
• Mike White, Standing Up for Basic Research

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Must Read

• driftglass, Lies, Damn Lies, and David Brooks
• Danielle Brian, Watchdogs Needed: Top Government Investigator Positions Left Unfilled for Years
• Rebecca Steinitz, What Went Wrong In McKinney [Ed.:  “De-escalate”.   Hold that thought.]

Should Read

• Mark Bittman (NYT), Let’s Help Create More Farmers
• Brian Schmidt, Tipping points for local land use policies
• Eli Rabett, [Global Circulation Models]: Explicative value is strong, predictive only in the long run
• Barton Paul Levenson, Are the Models Untestable?

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Must Read

• Tim Murphy, How Bernie Sanders Learned to Be a Real Politician
• Juan Cole, How Mainstream is Bernie Sanders?
• Aurin Squire, Biker Gangs, Tamir Rice, And The Rise Of White Fragility
• Mike Konczal, What’s Left After Higher Education Is Dismantled [Ed.:  Related reading.]

Should Read

• driftglass, The Paper Chase
• Monica Davey and Tamar Lewin (NYT), Unions Subdued, Scott Walker Turns to Tenure at Wisconsin Colleges
• Norm Ornstein, This Isn’t Dennis Hastert’s First Scandal  [Ed.:  But the earlier ones didn’t involve sex so no one particularly cared.]
• Jon Stewart, Learning Curves Are for Pussies  [Ed.:  Strong and wrong, baby!  Strong and wrong!]
• Kieran Healy, Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere
• Jared Bernstein, Why is it so hard to regulate the banks? It’s less the complexity than the political power.
• Jamelle Bouie, Why building moratoriums won’t solve San Francisco’s housing crisis
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Why Am I A Keynesian?
• Michael Hiltzik, Reduced public funding for basic research leaves U.S. in the scientific dust

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Must Read

• Paul Waldman, Honor Our War Dead On Memorial Day — They Won’t Be the Last
• Tim Wu, Why Are There So Many Shuttered Storefronts in the West Village?
• Eduardo Porter (NYT), American Innovation Lies on Weak Foundation
• Paul Krugman (NYT), The Insecure American
• Jon Stewart, Bernie Sanders Kicks Off His Presidential Campaign

Should Read

• Dean Baker, Look, a Deficit!: How NPR Distracts You From Issues That Will Actually Affect Your Life
• Washington Post, Faces of the Fallen
• Brittany Bronson (NYT), Long Odds in the Game of Life
• Mike the Mad Biologist, When Will We Realize the U.S. Has a Gentry Class?
• David Bromwich, What Went Wrong: Assessing Obama’s Legacy [Ed.:  Subscription required.  NB:  A Harper’s subscription is worth every penny.]
• Ed Kilgore, The Tired Old “Both Sides Getting More Extreme” Meme Continue reading →

Must Read

• James Fallows, Why Did We Invade Iraq?
• Andrew Bacewicz, A Letter to Paul Wolfowitz: Occasioned by the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war  [Ed.:  From March 2013]
• The Center for Public Integrity, Iraq: The War Card
• The NY Times Editorial Board, The Escalation of Unauthorized Wars

Should Read

• Josh Bivens, More Notes on the Gains From Trade and Who Gets Them
• Elise Gould, Poor People Work:  A Majority of Poor People Who Can Work Do
• Dean Baker, Don’t Be Sure that Powerful People Want the Economy to Return to Normal
• Jon Green, Republicans are trying to legally rig elections: Ohio poll tax edition

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Must Read/Watch

• Paul Krugman (NYT), Fraternity of Failure
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Blinkers and Lies
• Bruce Barlett interviewed by Elias Isquith, “Utter insanity and stupidity”: Ex-Reagan adviser unloads on GOP, lobbyists and the myth of the “moderate Republican”
• Katrina Brooker, Why Elizabeth Warren Makes Bankers So Uneasy, and So Quiet [Ed.:  Apropos of Bruce Bartlett’s comments, Sen. Warren is an ex-Republican.]

Should Read

• Paul Waldman, Should We Relitigate the Iraq War in the 2016 Campaign? You Bet We Should
• Sarah Gray, Four Myths About the “Freelancer Class”
• Cathy O’Neil, Sharing Insurance Costs With the Sharing Economy
• E.J. Dionne, A Radical Pope
• Jason Furman (NYT), Smart Social Programs
• Salman Rushdie, Keynote address at 2015 Emory University Commencement

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