But first, a public service announcement:

Must Read

• J.W. Mason, Disgorge the Cash
• Josh Barro (NYT), What Is ‘Middle-Class Economics’?
• Molly Ivins, Lyin’ Bully
• Matt Taibbi, Rudy Giuliani, American Soviet

Should Read

• BBC News, Russia opposition politician Boris Nemtsov shot dead
• Paul Krugman (NYT), The Closed Minds Problem
• Eric Chandler, Never Volunteer

Continue reading →

Must Read

• Jared Bernstein, Real weekly earnings are up.  Here’s why. 
• William K. Black, The Study that Foreshadowed the Three Fraud Epidemics that Drove the [Economic] Crisis [of 2008]
• Christopher Ketcham, The Great Republican Land Heist:  Cliven Bundy and the politicians who are plundering the West  [Ed.:  Harper’s subscription required.  Worth the investment if you don’t have one.]
• Wayne Barrett, What Rudy Giuliani knows about love

Should Read/Watch

• Jennifer Francis, A melting Arctic and weird weather:  The plot thickens
• FrontLine (w/ Dr. Atul Gawande), Being Mortal
• Matt Taibbi, A Whistleblower’s Horror Story  [Ed.:  MT makes a couple provocative statements in his intro paragraphs which aren’t germane to the rest of the story.  Don’t let those be a distraction.]
• Larry Mishel, Failed Theory Posed by Wall Street Dems Puts Hillary Clinton in a Bind
• Teresa Tritch (NYT), When Consumers Don’t Spend
• Amy Dean, A Bigger Tent:  Can Richard Trumka Save the Labor Movement?

Labor

• Ross Eisenbrey, An Open Letter to Sec. of Labor Tom Perez  [Ed.:  Urges investigation of H-1B visa abuse.]
• Dean Baker, Bad News In China:  Blue Collar Wages Are Soaring
• Paul Jaskunas (NYT), The Tyranny of the Forced Smile
• Robert Charette, Exposing the Roots of the Perpetual “STEM Crisis”

Environment Continue reading →

Must Read

• Ron Hira, Congress and President Obama Cannot Sit Idly By While Companies Use H-1B Guestworkers to Replace American Workers
• Dean Baker, Throw the Truth Out the Door: President Obama Has to Pass a Trade Deal
• Charlie Pierce, Trading Places: The Place Where Populism Goes To Die
• Andrew Higgins (NYT), Beating Russia at Its Own Long Game

Should Read

• Shaila Dewan (NYT), States Consider Increasing Taxes for the Poor and Cutting Them for the Affluent
• Jared Bernstein, The tyranny of averages, “deltas” and the need for some version of zero-based budgeting
• John Mearsheimer (NYT), Don’t Arm Ukraine
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Foolish, Historically Illiterate, Incredible Response to Obama’s Prayer Breakfast Speech
• Noam Chomsky, The World of Our Grandchildren
• Adam Vaccaro, How London’s Olympics Went Way Over Budget  [Ed.:  Worth reading because Boston is in the running to host the 2024 games and MA taxpayers would likely be on the hook for budget overruns.]

Environment

• Joe Romm, Anti-‘Geoengineering’ National Academy Report Opposes ‘Climate-Altering Deployment’
• Thomas Kostigen, Could California’s Drought Last 200 Years? Clues from the past suggest the ocean’s temperature may be a driver.
• Christina Sarich, This US City First to Run 100 Percent on Sustainable Energy

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Must Read

• Harold Meyerson, The Democrats in Opposition
• FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality

Should Read

• Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, Why Are We Arguing About Measles Vaccines In 2015?
• Julie McKay Turner, Anatomy of a Solution: A Final Update to Bedford’s Salt Shed Saga
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Debt:  A Thought Experiment
• Cathy O’Neil, Working with Larry Summers (Part 2)

Work

• Tekla Perry, Massive Worldwide Layoff Under Way At IBM
• Beryl Lieff Benderly, Another funny thing happened on the way to the STEM shortage
• Jordan Weissmann, The Myth of America’s Tech-Talent Shortage
• Robert Charette, The STEM Crisis Is a Myth
• Tom Jacobs, Americans Overestimate Class Mobility

Continue reading →

Must Watch/Read

• David Cay Johnston, Economy Grows, Incomes Shrink
• Robert Reich, The Worst Trade Deal You’ve Never Heard Of
• Dionne Searcey and Robert Gebeloff (NYT), Middle Class Shrinks Further as More Fall Out Instead of Climbing Up

Should Read

• Doug Henwood, Why Bosses Hate Unions
• Josh Barro (NYT), A ‘Rich’ Person Is Someone Who Makes 50 Percent More Than You:  Why Obama’s Proposal for 529s Had No Chance
• Max Ehrenfruend, Affordable housing didn’t cause the financial crisis  (see also Matt Taibbi on the subject here and here)
• Zephyr Teachout (NYT), Legalized Bribery

F@#* the TPP

• Kevin Gallagher, Exporting Financial Instability
• Joe Stiglitz (NYT), Don’t Trade Away Our Health

Continue reading →

Must Read/Listen

• Robert Kuttner, The Libertarian Delusion  [Ed.:  See also Brad DeLong’s “Wisdom and Liberty” for a complementary commentary on their political delusions.]
• William Rivers Pitt, Twenty Pounds of BS in a Ten-Pound Bag [Ed.:  A review of Pres. Obama’s SOTU address.]
• Josh Bivens, Trade Agreements or Boosting Wages? We Can’t Do Both.
• Open Source with Christopher Lydon, Hacking ‘Affordable Care’

Should Read/Watch

• Joel Achenbach, Scientists: Human activity has pushed Earth beyond four of nine ‘planetary boundaries’ [Ed.:  ‘Planetary boundaries’ defined here.]
• Eli Rabett, Andy Dessler Smokes Richard Lindzen [Ed.:  Climate scientists Dessler and Lindzen debate interpretation of data and implications for long-term climate predictions.]
• Eric Prentis, Evidence on U.S. Electricity Prices: Regulated Utility vs. Restructured States.
• Joe Stiglitz, The Politics of Economic Stupidity
• Robert Kuttner, The Politics of Gesture

Continue reading →

Must Read/Watch

• FrontLine, Putin’s Way
• The Nib, Vaccines Work.  Here Are the Facts
• Erika Eichelberger, The House Just Passed a GOP Bill Wiping Out Wall Street Reforms
• Dean Baker, As S.&P. Prepares to Settle, Worth Remembering the Killing of the Franken Amendment

Should Read

• Mark Thoma, Full Employment Alone Won’t Solve Problem of Stagnating Wages
• Larry Mishel, Why Your Wages Are Idling in Neutral
• Jonathan Chait, It’d Be Nice If Conservatives Were Empiricists, But Let’s Face It
• Bruce Bartlett, Why the GOP should stop invoking Reaganomics [Ed.:  Bartlett is an empiricist who is conservative.  I liked him for Treasury Secretary when Geithner stepped down.]

Continue reading →

Must Read/Watch

• Sen. Bernard Sanders, Letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman
• Timothy Noah interviewing Thomas Geoghegan, Why the Democrats Need Labor Again
• WGBH, Redefining the Middle Class, A yearlong series on income inequality:  The Middle Class Is Retreating Outside Route 128
• The Daily Show, The Homeless Homed

Should Read

• Jim Tankersley, America’s got talent but it’s flowing in the wrong direction
• Project on Government Oversight, Infographic: Meet the Foreign Influence Database
• Leon Wieseltier (NYT), Among the Disrupted
• Fred Bever, [MA Gov. Charlie Baker] Emphasizes Experience, Bipartisanship With Cabinet Picks
• David Martin, A Health Care Imperative For Gov. Baker

Continue reading →

Must Read

• James Fallows, The Tragedy of the American Military
• Joschka Fischer, Europe’s Make-or-Break Year
• Matt Taibbi, The NYPD’s ‘Work Stoppage’ Is Surreal
• Boston Globe, Why Market Basket employees are our 2014 Bostonians of the Year

Should Read

• Michiko Kakutani (NYT), Human Costs of the Forever Wars, Enough to Fill a Bookshelf
• Jared Bernstein, The House cuts funding for the IRS. That’s a big mistake.
• Dean Baker, The Trade Agreement Pinatas
• Robert Reich, The Government Problem

Continue reading →

This being Christmas week I pretty much skipped keeping up with news and politics.  I did however review the articles I flagged a significant over the past year and identified which ones seem to have held up best over time.   Here, in no particular order, is my top reads of 2014:

• Thomas Kochan, In Market Basket Protests, Three Lessons For Corporate America
• The Boston Globe, 2014 Bostonians of the Year:  Market Basket employees
• Clara Jeffrey’s interview with Matt Taibbi, The Man Behind the Vampire Squid: An Interview with Matt Taibbi
• Ray Pierrehumbert, Climate Science Is Settled Enough
• Naomi Oreskes, A “Green” Bridge to Hell
• Zadie Smith, Elegy for a Country’s Seasons
• Alyssa Battistoni, Alive in the Sunshine
• Robert Kuttner, Obama’s Obama:  The contradictions of Cass Sunstein
• Mike Konczal, The [University of North Carolina] Coup and the Second Limit of Economic Liberalism
• Jim Tankersley, Why America’s middle class is lost
• Tom Ricks, Why Am I Moving Left?
• Bill Moyers interviewing John R. MacArthur, Democrats Bow Down to Wall Street
• Dougald Hine, What do you do, after you stop pretending?
• Eric Chandler, Running vs Running Away

From Hine’s essay:

There’s a big difference between the task of trying to sustain “civilisation” in its current form … and the task of holding open a space for the things which make life worth living. I’d suggest that it’s this second task, in its many forms, which remains, after we’ve given up on false hopes.

That is the aspect of life that I find most challenging and which I expect I will wrestle with until they plant me.

Continue reading →