Must Read

• Natasha Geiling, California’s Drought Could Upend America’s Entire Food System
• Radley Balko, This isn’t 1968. Baltimore isn’t Watts. And Hillary Clinton isn’t Michael Dukakis.
• Eduardo Porter (NYT), Income Inequality Is Costing the U.S. on Social Issues
• driftglass, David Brooks: The Great Project Continues

Should Read

• Jonathan Chait, The Obamacare Doomsday Cult Struggles to Adapt to World That Did Not End
• Charlie Savage and Jonathan Weisman (NYT), N.S.A. Phone Data Collection Is Illegal, Appeals Court Rules
• Tim Dee (NYT), Our Bleak Exile of Nature
• MIT Washington Office, The Future Postponed: Why Declining Investment in Basic Research Threatens a U.S. Innovation Deficit
• Emily Badger, The long, painful and repetitive history of how Baltimore became Baltimore

Continue reading →

Must Read

• Mark Puente, Undue Force
• Scott Lemieux, Kansas’ experiment in concentrated conservatism keeps getting grimmer
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Ideology and Integrity

Should Read

• Lydia DePillis, Why companies are rewarding shareholders instead of investing in the real economy
• Robert Reich, The Political Roots of Widening Inequality
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Nobody Said That
• Joe Firestone, Fast/Track/TPP: The Death of National Sovereignty, State Sovereignty, Separation of Powers, and Democracy
• John Harris, Everything Wrong With America Can Be Blamed On The Couple Standing Behind Me In Line For Ice Cream This Past Saturday
• Amy Schumer, Football Town Nights
• Doktor Zoom, Brave New Tractor: John Deere And General Motors Pretty Sure They Own All Your Stuff

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Must Read

• Andy Lacis on what we actually know about global warming and why we know it [Ed.:  I’m presuming he’s this Andy Lacis.]
• Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, No Cost for Extremism
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Zombies of 2016
• Elise Gold and Alyssa Davis, Sluggish Wage Growth Over the Last Year Is Not Due to the Mix of Jobs Being Created
• Charlie Post, We’re All Precarious Now

Should Read

• Charlie Pierce, Trade Show, Part Deux: Imaginary Benefits vs. Real Costs [Ed.:  The TPP.  See also here]
• Larry Mishel, Heidi Shierholz, and John Schmitt, Wage Inequality:  A Story of Policy Choices
• Pew Research Center, The Politics of Financial Insecurity
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Wingnut Welfare and Work Incentives
• Ezra Klein, The anti-Obamacare movement is making red states sicker and poorer
• Brian Beutler, Obamacare Is More Popular Than It Seems – If You Discount These People’s Opinions
• Beth Daley, Despite spread of Lyme disease, Mass. dedicates no money to prevention

Health Care Continue reading →

Must Read/Watch

• Jared Bernstein, Raising the median wage: Policies that target the middle class
• Matthew Yglesias, Chris Christie says his Social Security plan hurts the rich, but it really hurts the poor
• Daniel Larison, Iran Hawks and the Logic of Arms Control
• William Saletan, Foreign Saboteurs:  When it comes to a Democratic president’s foreign policy, Republicans often side with America’s enemies.
• Russia Today, Vladimir Putin’s annual Q&A session [Ed.:  No, I didn’t watch all of it.  NY Times’ summary here.]

Should Read

• Dave Johnson, The Fast Track Fight Begins In The Senate
• Dean Baker, Redistribution Can Involve Less Government Rather than More [Ed.:  See also Mark Thoma’s comment]
• Matthew Yglesias, Elizabeth Warren has a game-changing idea that doesn’t require Congress
• Paul Krugman (NYT), It Takes a Party

Foreign Policy Continue reading →

Must Listen/Read

• President Obama’s Full NPR Interview On Iran Nuclear Deal  [Ed.:  The President gets this one very right, I think.]
• Glenn Kessler, [Sen. Tom] Cotton’s misguided history lesson on the North Korean nuclear deal
• Matthew Yglesias, 12 years ago today, Donald Rumsfeld sent the greatest memo of all time
• Larry Mishel, The Opportunity Dodge
• Robert Reich, The Defining Moment, and Hillary Rodham Clinton

Should Read

• Economic Policy Institute, Missing Workers:  The Missing Part of the Unemployment Story
• Danny Vinik, [Kansas Gov.] Brownback’s Right-Wing “Experiment” Is Bankrupting Kansas. His Solution: More Radical Cuts. [Ed.:  See also Jon Stewart.]
• Tim Maughan, The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust
• Eli Rabett, Andy Lacis Writes to Steve Koonin [Ed.:  Essential climate science explained in detail to someone who shouldn’t need to have it explained to them in detail.]
• Andrew Gelman, A silly little error, of the sort that I make every day
• Eric Asimov (NYT), The Right Wine to Drink With a Sandwich

Work, Jobs, and Trade (Economics)

• Continue reading →

Must Read

• Sabrina Tavernise (NYT), The Condition Cancer Research Is In [Ed.:  Read this as much for observations on the condition scientific research is in as for cancer research in particular.]
• driftglass, 10 Years After: 2007 — SOTU FU  [Ed.:  Related tirades here and here.]
• BBC News, Are we tired of talking about climate change?
• Jonathan Franzen, Carbon Capture:  Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation? [Ed.:  Franzen’s piece is worth reading it’s own right but also in the context of Elizabeth Farnsworth’s “Is ‘New Conservation’ Still Conservation?“]

Should Read

• James Hansen, Makiko Sato, and Reto Ruedy, The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
• Adam Nagourney, Jack Healy, and Nelson D. Schwartz (NYT), California Drought Tests History of Endless Growth
• Scott Beauchamp, Military High Tech Leads to Big Graft
• Dean Baker, Generic Sovaldi Costs Less than $1,000 in India
• Lydia DePillis, Losing a job is always terrible.  For workers over 50, it’s worse.
• Andrew Gelman, Regression: What’s it all about?

Environment

• Ari Phillips, Antarctica Recorded Its Hottest Temperature on Record This Week
• Justin Gillis (NYT), Climate Change Threatens to Kill Off More Aspen Forests by 2050s, Scientists Say
• Michael Oppenheimer, When Will Climate Change Become More Dangerous? 
• Joe Romm, Long-Awaited ‘Jump’ In Global Warming Now Appears ‘Imminent’ [Ed.:  The title suggests fear mongering but there’s actually a technical basis for the argument.]

The California Drought and Its Consequences Continue reading →

Must Read

• Larry Mishel and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Stark Choices: “People’s Budget” vs. Republican Plan
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Liberals, Conservatives, and Jobs
• Charlie Pierce, The Warren Effect: Here Is A Bluff That Needs To Be Called
• Boston Globe Editorial Board, Democrats need Elizabeth Warren’s voice in 2016 presidential race

Should Read

• Matt Taibbi, Hillary Clinton Is Turning Into Richard Nixon and Bill Belichick
• Robert Kuttner, 7 Reasons Why the 99 Percent Keeps Losing
• Robert Scott, What’s Wrong with the [Transpacific Partnership (TPP)]? This deal will lead to more job loss and downward pressures on the wages of most working Americans
• Brad Plumer, The Gulf Stream system may already be weakening. That’s not good.
• Adam Clark Estes, Missing Restricted Military Gear Keeps Popping Up on eBay
• Thomas Piketty, Student Loan Debt Is the Enemy of Meritocracy in the US [Ed.:  See also Mike Konczal, The [University of North Carolina] Coup and the Second Limit of Economic Liberalism]

Education

• Continue reading →

Must Read

• Jared Bernstein, One of the more outrageous things ever said re fiscal policy…and that’s a high bar. [Ed.:  The worthlessness of the contemporary Republican party in a nutshell – not just ideologues, delusional ideologues.]
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Trillion Dollar Fraudsters [Ed.:  More on the bad joke House Republicans are calling a budget proposal]
• James Pethokoukis, The disappointing unseriousness of the House GOP’s budget [Ed.:  Even Pethokoukis, a righty who risks being punished severely by his employer, calls it out as a joke.]
• Alan Westin, The John Birch Society [Ed.:  From 1961.  Still relevant today.]

Should Read

• John R. MacArthur, The Mayor and the Machine
• Larry Mishel, We Shouldn’t Accept the Unacceptable on Wage Growth
• Dean Baker, Getting It Wrong on Trade:  TPP Is Not Good for Workers
• Elissa Ely, Too Many Things to Care About
• George Yancy and Noam Chomsky (NYT), Noam Chomsky on the Roots of American Racism
• Robert Kuttner, The Dance of Liberals and Radicals

More on the House Republicans’ Budget Proposal

• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Statement by Robert Greenstein, President, On House Budget Chairman’s Plan
• Jonathan Weisman (NYT), Chasm Grows Within G.O.P. Over Spending
• Bill Scher, Are Republicans Insane Enough To Propose a Balanced Budget?

Continue reading →

Must Read

• James Fallows, One of Our Major Newspapers Says: What the Hell, Why Not Start Another Unwinnable War?
• Robert Kuttner, Can Liberal Democracy Survive?
• Elise Gould, Not a Puzzle—Wages Growth is Sluggish Because Employers Hold All the Cards

Should Read

• Elise Gould, There Are Nearly Six Unemployed Construction Workers for Every Construction Job Opening
• Lydia DePillis and Jim Tankersley, To fix inequality, Democrats are pushing unions
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Slandering the 70s
• Robert Kuttner, Will the Fed Kill the Recovery Again?
• Robert Reich, The conundrum of corporation and nation
• driftglass, King Cotton: Party Like It’s 1862 [Ed.:  Republican idiocy on Iran.]

Republican Idiocy on Iran

• NY Times Editorial Board (NYT), Republican Idiocy on Iran
• Greg Jaffe, Who are the seven Republicans who didn’t sign the Iran letter?

Bipartisan Idiocy on Iran

• Ray Edroso, Gulf War III – Third Time’s the Charm

War

• Sarah Everts, When Chemicals Became Weapons of War
• Sergio Pecanha, Jeremy White and K.K. Rebecca Lai (NYT), Syria After Four Years of Mayhem
• Paul Waldman, Kicking the Iraq Syndrome On the Way to Tehran

Continue reading →

Must Read

• Josh Israel and Katie Valentine, TransCanada Is Seizing People’s Land To Build Keystone, But Conservatives Have Been Dead Silent
• Jared Bernstein, Right to work for less: Gov. Scott Walker wants to lower worker pay in Wisconsin
• Dean Baker, The Federal Reserve Board’s Plan to Kill Jobs

Should Read

• Ronald Krotoszynski Jr. (NYT), Alabama’s Dangerous Defiance
• Ray Pierrehumbert, Climate Hacking Is Barking Mad
• Andrew Gelman, What hypothesis testing is all about. (Hint: It’s not what you think.)
• Sam Sinai, Why I became a computer scientist instead of a doctor

Science

• Cnet, Astounding shots from sharpest new satellite in space
• Opli, The first ever photograph of light as both a particle and wave
• Tim Wallace (NYT), A Giant Picture of Snow Across the United States

Continue reading →