Politics

• Simon Johnson, The Long March of the American Right
• Robert Reich, The Triumph of the Right
• Sen. Warren on the job
• Roll Call,Reid: ‘There’s Not Going to Be a Grand Bargain’
• Marisa DeFranco: Candidate for US Congress, Massachusetts 6th District
• WBUR CommonHealth, What Makes [Donald] Berwick Run [for MA Governor]?

Taxes

• Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, Why the 1% should pay tax at 80%
• NY Times, Plan to Tax the Rich Could Aim Higher

Health Care and the Politics Thereof

• Paul Krugman, Lies, Damned Lies, and Fox News
• Aaron Carroll and Austin Frakt, Raising the Medicare eligibility age is now a REALLY bad idea
• Paul Krugman, Lousy Medicaid Arguments
• I’m collecting material for a post on the problems with HealthCare.gov.   My working title was originally “Obamacare Implementation Fail” but is now “HealthCare.gov needs to work.”   The latter is more to the point.  Stay tuned.

Economics

• Brad DeLong, How To Know More About the Budget than Every Single Republican Office-Holder, Flack, and Think-Tanker in Washington–and Also More than 90% of the Democrats  (Note to self:  Start reading Off the Charts blog.)
• Dean Baker, Unemployment Edges Down as People Continue to Leave the Workforce in September  (The “Unemployment Rate”:  “You keep using [that term].  I do not think it means what you think it means.”)

Bank Fraud

• NY Times, Tentative Deal Hands JPMorgan Chase a Record Penalty

Social Commentary

• The Raw Story, Pope Francis describes ‘ideological Christians’ as a ‘serious illness’ within the Church
• Amia Srinivasan, Questions for Free-Market Moralists

Science

• Dana Nuccitelli, Does the global warming ‘pause’ mean what you think it means?
• Real Climate, A warming pause?
• NY Times, A Quiet Trip to the Ozone Hole
• NY Times, Balloon Ride to Offer Expansive View, for a Price
• NY Times, Where Science Is Going

Miscellany

• I Love Coffee, What does your favorite coffee say about your personality?
• Artisanal Pencil Sharpening

Politics

• Bruce Bartlett, For Many Hard-Liners, Debt Default Is the Goal
• Topher Spiro, The Myth of the Medical-Device Tax
• Joan Vennochi, Why the union-bashing?
• Paul Krugman, Exortionist Fellow-Travelers
• Michael Goldfarb, Birth of conservative delusion: Roger Ailes takes his revenge
• NY Times, From the Right, Despair, Anger and Disillusion
• Michelle Goldberg, 2008 Crash Prompts Young Intellectuals To Revisit Marxism
• Steve Almond, The Government We Deserve
• NY Times, California Sees Gridlock Ease in Governing

2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

• Mark Thoma, Fama, Hansen, and Shiller
• Neil Irwin, Robert Shiller: ‘When I look around I see a lot of foolishness, and I can’t believe it’s not important economically’

Social Commentary

• Ta-Nehisi Coates, What This Cruel War Was Over
• Kareem Abdul Jabar, How to Become a Man

Human Behavior

• Columbia Journalism Review, The Backfire Effect
• Bill Moyers, Sherry Turkle on Being Alone Together (Moyers interviewing Turkle)

History

• NY Times, ‘Ebony and Ivy,’ About How Slavery Helped Universities Grow
• The Oatmeal, Christopher Columbus was awful (but this other guy was not)

Science

• Coursera, Global Warming: The Science of Climate Change
• IEEE Spectrum, New Optics Can Capture Wide Fields in Exquisite Detail
• Irving Herman, Herman’s Research and the American Presidency
• Camera Culture group at the MIT Media Lab
• Adela Barriuso and Antonio Torralba, Notes on Image Annotation

Economics

• Bob Kuttner, The Task Rabbit Economy
• Floyd Norris, The Guarantee That Banks May Fear to Invoke

Debt Ceiling and Government Shutdown

• Sean Wilentz, Obama and the Debt
• US Treasury, The Potential Macroeconomic Effect of Debt Ceiling Brinksmanship
• Mark Thoma, Inexcusable Republican Tactics Endanger the Economy
• Matthew Yglesias, It’s Actually Worth Reading Obama’s 2006 Debt Ceiling Speech

Health Care

• WBUR, Rising Number Of Western Mass. Vaccine Skeptics A Quandary For Doctor

Science

• NY Times, U.S. Nobel Laureates Worry About Future of Basic Science

The Republican Party

• Continue reading →

Politics

• Ezra Klein (Wonkblog), Summers lost because liberals don’t trust Obama on financial reform
• Charlie Pierce, Elizabeth [Warren] Would Like A Word
• Lydia DePillis (Wonkblog), 4 million more people would be poor if it weren’t for food stamps
• NPR, House Votes To Slash $40 Billion From Food Stamp Program
• Jared Bernstein, The DC Political Scene, Such That It Is
• NY Times, As Budget Fight Looms, Obama Sees Defiance in His Own Party
• Paul Krugman, The Crazy Party

Economics

• Brad DeLong, We Simply Do Not Have a Deficit Problem for at Least the Next Three Presidential Terms
• Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, My grovelling apology to [Gernan Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schäuble
• Neil Irwin (Wonkblog), The typical American family makes less than it did in 1989
• Quartz, American incomes are down 8.3% since 2007
• Arin Dube, Broken Job Ladders and the Great Recession: Fast Food Edition
• Dean Baker, Few Jobs Means Bad Jobs
• Charlie Pierce, Working.  And Still Poor.

Government Surveillance

• NY Times, N.S.A. Able to Foil Basic Safeguards of Privacy on Web

Human Behavior

• Continue reading →

Economics

• The Economist, The origins of the financial crisis: Crash course
• Mark Thoma, 10 Real and Bogus Reasons for the Slow Recovery
• Brad Plumer (Wonkblog), This is how everyone’s been doing since the financial crisis
• Mark T. Williams (Cognosenti), How To Prevent The Next Global Financial Crisis
• Paul Krugman, What Defunding Means

Politics

• ThinkProgress.com, Fox News Pundit Shuts Down Network’s Hysteria Over Benghazi: ‘It’s Gone, Baby. It’s In Your Head’
• Chris Cilliza, The least productive Congress ever
• Paul Krugman, The Wonk Gap
• Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, “Brighter future for politics and policy requires a different Republican Party”
• Robert Reich, Happy Birthday Occupy (related)

Science and Environment

• opposingviews.com,  Michael E. Mann, Top Climate Scientist, Can Proceed WIth Libel Suit Against Right Wing Blogs, Judge Rules
• Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy blog), Deniers, disgust, and defamation
• Brad Plumer, We’ve covered the world in pesticides. Is that a problem?
• NY Times, In a Breathtaking First, NASA Craft Exits the Solar System
• NY Times, The Pop! of the Wild

Surveillance

• Matthew Green (A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering blog): On the NSA
• boston.com, Google loses appeal in Street View snooping case

Miscellaneous

• Lt. Col. Robert Bateman, US Embassy Kabul Attack Anniversary – The Anniversary Of The Day My Wife Was Attacked
• Nation of Change, Largest Gun Study Ever: More Guns, More Murder

Politics

• Jonathan Chait, Tea Party Now Covering News for Washington Post
• NY Times, Statehouse Swagger in the Gun Debate
• Merriam-Webster, sedition (n.)
• NY Times, Challengers to South Carolina Senator Are Lining Up on the Right
• Kevin Drum, Conservatives Are Finally Admitting What Voter Suppression Laws Are All About

Syria (chemical weapons)

• A very brief primer on military-grade nerve agents
• Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Chemical Weapons Convention (Syria is not a party to it.  The US is.)
• U.S. Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013
• PM David Cameron argues for UK intervention in Syria (Watch the Parliament debate here.  I listened to it on the radio on my way to work.  The debate was serious and substantive.)
• Matt Duss argues against a US military strike in Syria, Let’s Avoid the Fog of War
• Mother Jones, Are Chemical Weapons Reason Enough to Go to War?
• Foreign Policy, Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran (Note #1:  A fine addition to the Reagan legacy.  Note #2:  Summary of the FP article here if you can’t access it directly.)

Economics

• Continue reading →

Violence Prevention

• NPR, Youths At Risk Of Violence Say They Need Guns For Protection
• NPR, Therapy Helps Troubled Teens Rethink Crime

Detroit

• Jared Bernstein, What Went Wrong in Detroit, and the Road Ahead.  Notable quote:

“Despite the fact that the distorted American debate claims that everybody wins, in fact, globalization creates winners and losers.  That’s not at all an endorsement of protectionism.  It’s saying that policy makers have to work hard, much harder than ours have, to create an environment where citizens benefit from expanded global trade not just as consumers seeking lower prices but as workers needing rising wages.”

• Jared Bernstein, Helping Detroit
• Steve Rattner, We Have to Step In and Save Detroit.  Notable quote:

“But apart from voting in elections, the 700,000 remaining residents of the Motor City are no more responsible for Detroit’s problems than… “

• NY Times, Vast Land Deal Divides Detroit
• Hantz Farms Detroit (“It’s our dream to create the world’s largest urban farm, right here in Detroit.”)
• Keep Growing Detroit! (“We exist to promote a food sovereign Detroit where the majority of fruits and vegetables consumed by Detroiters are grown by residents within the city’s limits.”)

Government Surveillance

• NY Times, House Defeats Effort to Rein In N.S.A. Data Gathering
• Reason.com, Mapping the Vote to Limit the NSA via Amash-Conyers Amendment
• NY Times, Roberts’s Picks Reshaping Secret Surveillance Court
• NY Times, Momentum Builds Against N.S.A. Surveillance
• David Brin, If You Can’t Hide From Big Brother, Adapt

Continue reading →

Trayvon Martin

• HLNtv.com:  Interactive Map:  The Trayvon Martin Killing
• Mother Jones:  Transcript of George Zimmerman’s Call to the Police
• State of Florida vs. George Zimmerman:  Affidavit of Probable Cause
• Florida Statutes and Constitution
• Ta-Nehisi Coates:  How Stand Your Ground Relates To George Zimmerman
• Emily Bazelon:  Zimmerman’s Not Guilty.  But Florida Sure Is.
• Charles Blow:  The Whole System Failed Trayvon Martin
• Charlie Pierce:  The Great Contradiction
• Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Banality of Richard Cohen and Racist Profiling

Health Care

• NY Times:  Health Plan Cost for New Yorkers Set to Fall 50%
• Paul Krugman:  Obamacare Is the Right’s Worst Nightmare
• Dr. Claire McCarthy:  ABC’s hiring of Jenny McCarthy: a decision that could cost lives

Economics:  Jobs and Unemployment

• Matt Taibbi:  David Brooks Wonders Why Men Can’t Find Jobs:  Comedy Ensues
• Felix Salmon:  The effect of unemployment insurance on unemployment (old article but good framing of issues)
• Wall Street Journal:  Unemployment Benefits Extensions Have Small Impact on Jobless Rate
• Henry Farber and Robert Valletta:  Do Extended Unemployment Benefits Lengthen Unemployment Spells?  Evidence from Recent Cycles in the U.S. Labor Market.
• Floyd Norris:  Gender Gaps Appear as Employment Recovers From the Recession

Arts

• Ed Drew:  Tintype photos of his fellow soldiers in Afghanistan.  First tintypes from a combat zone since the Civil War.  (I like his Under the Helo portfolio a lot as well.)

Politics and Other

• Zane McMillin:  Rep. Justin Amash will try to derail NSA surveillance by targeting funds
• Andrew Gelman:  “Stop and frisk” statistics
• ProPublica:  Army Says War Records Gap Is Real, Launches Recovery Effort
• Bruce Bartlett:  The GOP’s Mounting Woes
• Boston Globe:  Contract bidder called on Markey for favor
• James Seaton:  The Gift of Christopher Lasch (from 1994)

Politics

• Bloomberg, Warren, Senators Introduce 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act
• NY Times Op-Ed, In the House, a Refusal to Govern
• Paul Krugman, Delusions of Populism
• Washington Post, Americans on food stamps
• Bloomberg:  Bernanke Departure With Duke Heralds Cascade of Fed Appointments
• Paul Krugman, Spitzer
• Jared Bernstein, Sen. Warren Uses CBO Numbers – and still gets dinged by the WaPo Fact Checker
• Charlie Pierce, Meet Your Wingnut

Economics

• Bill Moyers, ‘Two American Families’
• Jared Bernstein, A Deeper Dive Into Sequestration’s Impacts on Head Start
• Teresa Ghilarducci, How to Grade a State’s Finances
• Continue reading →

Domestic Politics

• Jennifer Stisa Granick and Christopher Jon Sprigman, The Criminal N.S.A.

Supreme Court Decisions and Their Consequences:

• Doug Muder:  This Court Sucks
• Think Progress:  Six States Already Moving Forward With Voting Restrictions After Supreme Court Decision
• Michael Cooper:  After Ruling, States Rush to Enact Voting Laws

Economics

• Bruce Bartlett:  Zero-Based Tax Reform
• Jared Bernstein:  The Blank Slate Tax Reform Trap
• Jared Bernstein:  Full Employment: The Big Missing Piece
• Brad DeLong:  A Good Employment Report By Our Current Low Bar of Diminished Expectations
• Paul Krugman, Moochers, Grifters, and the Beveridge Curve
• Jared Bernstein, Sequester Watch, #11
• Catherine Rampell:  Sequester Hits the Long-Term Unemployed

International Politics

• Continue reading →