Must Read/Watch
- Jim Tankersley, Why America’s middle class is lost
- Bill Moyers interview with John R. MacArthur, Democrats Bow Down to Wall Street
- Jim Tankersley, A black hole for our best and brightest
Category Archives: Weekly Digests
Weekly Digest – December 14, 2014
Must Read/Watch
- Matt Taibbi, The Police in America Are Becoming Illegitimate
- C-SPAN, Senators McCain and Rockefeller on CIA Interrogations
Should Read
- Tim Egan (NYT), The War Hero and the Chicken Hawk
- Anthony Romero (NYT), Pardon Bush and Those Who Tortured
- Peter Pomerantsev (NYT), Russia’s Ideology: There Is No Truth
- Dave Johnson, Trans-Pacific Trade Talks Resume With Almost No Media Coverage
- Eileen McNamara, Democrats Cave On Deeply Flawed Spending Bill
- Matt Taibbi, Dodd-Frank Budget Fight Proves Democrats Are a Bunch of Stuffed Suits
- Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons
- John R. MacArthur, Publisher’s Letter
Weekly Digest – December 7, 2014
Must Read
- Bill Greider, How the Democratic Party Lost Its Soul
- Eric Lipton (NYT), Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Attorneys General
- Robert Kuttner, Low Oil Prices Are History’s Greatest Case of Market Failure
- NYT Editorial Board (NYT), The C.I.A.’s Power to Purge [Archived Email]
Should Read
- Scott Raab, Mark Udall Says America Will Be Disgusted at Torture Report
- Meredith McCulloch, Governor Cuts Funding for New Law Offsetting Hanscom [AFB] Education Costs [Ed.: Cuts affect Bedford and Bourne starting in FY16]
- Frank Rich, In Conversation: Chris Rock
- Elizabeth Drew, The Firing of Chuck Hagel
Economics
- Jared Bernstein, First Impressions: Strong payroll gains mark another solid jobs report
- Brad DeLong, The First Good Monthly Payroll Report of the Recovery, If I Am Not Mistaken…
- Jonathan Weisman (NYT), Uncertainty in Washington Poses Long List of Economic Perils
- David Cay Johnston, Real world contradicts right-wing tax theories
- Paul Krugman, How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled
- Dean Baker, Chris Rock, Ezra Klein, and the Second Great Depression Myth
Weekly Digest – November 30, 2014
- Excerpts from Must Read and Should Read pieces are provided at the end of this post
- Visit Rabett Run for useful analysis and commentary on climate science and the politics thereof.
- Robert Naiman, Torture Report: Mark Udall’s World-Historical Moment to Rescue CIA Oversight [See Excerpt 1 below.]
- What do the newly released witness statements tell us about the Michael Brown shooting? [2]
- Jared Bernstein, The tax extender package: a lame duck turkey [3]
- Jonathan Foley, The other inconvenient truth [4]
- Eli Rabett, Picture Postcards. [5]
Should Read
- Ray Pierrehumbert, Obama’s U.S.-China climate agreement: Carbon budget and exponential curves show why this is a fair deal. [6]
- Ryan Koronowski, Most White Evangelicals Attribute Intense National Disasters To The Apocalypse, Not Climate Change [7]
- Marissa Fessenden, Even Climate Scientists Are Getting Depressed by Our Lack of Progress [8]
Weekly Digest – November 23, 2014
Must Watch/Read
- Golden Retriever Fails Every Aspect of Obedience Competition
- Robert Reich, And Now the Richest .01 Percent (emphasis mine):
Of the 4,493 board members and CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations, more than four out of five contributed (many of the non-contributors were foreign nationals who were prohibited from giving). All this money has flowed to Democrats as well as Republicans. In fact, Democrats have increasingly relied on it. In the 2012 election cycle, the top .01 percent’s donations to Democrats were more than four times larger than all labor union donations to Democrats put together. The richest .01 percent haven’t been donating out of the goodness of their hearts. They’ve donated out of goodness to their wallets. Their political investments have paid off in the form of lower taxes on themselves and their businesses, subsidies for their corporations, government bailouts, federal prosecutions that end in settlements where companies don’t affirm or deny the facts and where executives don’t go to jail, watered-down regulations, and non-enforcement of antitrust laws.
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Enough Is Enough: The President’s Latest Wall Street Nominee [Antonio Weiss to serve as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the Treasury Department]
- Matthew Yglesias, The worst two paragraphs about American politics you’ll read today
Should Read: Obamacare Edition
- Robert Pear, Reed Abelson, and Agustin Armendariz (NYT), Cost of Coverage Under Affordable Care Act to Increase in 2015
- Dean Baker, NYT Reports That Some Health Insurers Are Raising Their Prices and Some High School Kids Are Smoking Marijuana
- Meghan O’Toole, Some Real News About Obamacare: Premium Increases Are Much Lower Than Expected
- Dean Baker, The Congressional Budget Office Has Consistently Over-Estimated the Cost of Obamacare
- Kevin Drum, People Who Use Obamacare Sure Do Like It
Weekly Digest – November 16, 2014
Must Read
- Mike Konczal, The [University of North Carolina] Coup and the Second Limit of Economic Liberalism
- Robert Kuttner, Obama’s Obama: The contradictions of Cass Sunstein [Ed.: Behind Harper’s paywall. Worth the price of a subscription.]
- Elise Gould, Why America’s Workers Need Faster Wage Growth—And What We Can Do About It
- David Sanger and William Broad (NYT), Pentagon Studies Reveal Major Nuclear Problems
Should Read
- Andrew Bacevich, Even if we defeat the Islamic State, we’ll still lose the bigger war
- Dan Drezner, The low-down, dirty truth about Grubergate [Ed.: Don’t ever call voters “stupid” or “uninformed”. Doesn’t matter if it’s true. Don’t do it.]
- The Oatmeal, Dear Senator Ted Cruz, I’m going to explain to you how Net Neutrality ACTUALLY works
- Bethany McLean (NYT), A House Is Not a Credit Card
- Kate Murphy (NYT), The Ethics of Infection
Politics Continue reading
Weekly Digest – November 9, 2014
Must Read
- Darrell Delamaide, Why Obama might welcome a Republican majority
- Dean Baker, “Trade” Deals Have Little to Do With Trade
- Dean Baker, Secular Stagnation” Is Progress, Now Can We Talk About the Trade Deficit?
- Jared Bernstein and Dean Baker, Full employment: The recovery’s missing ingredient
Should Read/Watch
- Tekla Perry, Migrant Tech Workers Abused by Contract Labor Firms, Investigation Shows
- C. J. Chivers (NYT [Ed.: See Note 1 below]), More Than 600 Reported Chemical Exposure in Iraq, Pentagon Acknowledges
- Jared Bernstein, What I didn’t hear on economic policy in the runup to the midterms
- Kevin Baker (NYT), Election 2014: President Obama Is Not a Happy Warrior
Politics: Election 2014 Continue reading
Weekly Digest – November 2, 2014
Must Read/Listen
- Donald Berwick, Casinos: A Losing Bet For Massachusetts
- WBUR, Videos: The 4 Mass. Ballot Questions, Explained
- Asma Khalid, 5 Key Policy Differences Between [MA Gubenatorial Candidates Charlie] Baker And [Martha] Coakley
- Moyers & Company, Bernie Sanders on Breaking Big Money’s Grip on Elections
Should Read/Listen
- Doug Muder, Religion and the Imagination [Ed: Doug’s sermon starts at about the 27:00 mark.]
- Roger Angell, Madison Bumgarner, The Best
- Cleve Moler, Variants of the QR Algorithm [Ed.: Should read if you do matrix algebra on a regular basis. If you don’t then you can skip it.]
Environment
- David Hendry, Climate change: Lessons for our future from the distant past
- Claudia Dreifus, Naomi Oreskes Imagines the Future History of Climate Change
- Emma Marris and Greg Aplet, How to Mend the Conservation Divide
- Kathryn Miles, Our Failing Weather Infrastructure
Weekly Digest – October 26, 2014
Must Read
- Nancy Carlsson-Paige, How Ed Policy is Hurting Early Childhood Education
- Atul Gawande, Modern Medicine Changed the Way We Die, and Not Always for the Better
- , Exploding wealth inequality in the United States
- Dean Baker, David Brooks’ Great Adventures in Fantasy Land
Should Read/Listen
- Radio Open Source, Is Capitalism Working?
- Bruce Bartlett, Obama Is a Republican
- Doug Henwood, Stop Hillary!
- “Today Is The 10th Anniversary Of Jon Stewart’s Epic Rant On CNN. He Hasn’t Been Back Since.”
Economics Continue reading
Weekly Digest – October 19, 2014
Must Read
- C. J. Chivers, The Secret U.S. Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons
- Thomas Frank, Zephyr Teachout’s ‘Corruption in America’
Should Read
- Andrew Gelman, 10th anniversary of “Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science” [Ed.: It’s a great blog. I probably spend more time there than at any other.]
- Coral Davenport, Pentagon Signals Security Risks of Climate Change
- Luke Brinker, The progressives are coming!: Why the latest attempt to “save” Democrats from populism is so pathetic
- Paul Krugman, The Civility Whine