Must Read

• C.J. Chivers, War Without End
• Andrew Bacevich, How to Challenge the Elite Consensus for Endless War
• Rep. Barbara Lee, No More Blank Checks for War

Should Read

• Bill McKibben, Climate Change Is Our Most Critical National-Security Challenge
• Robinson Meyer, Democrats Are Shockingly Unprepared to Fight Climate Change
• Alyssa Battistoni, How Not to Talk About Climate Change

Worth Reading Continue reading →

Must read:

• Chris Dillow, Britain’s open borders policy
• Jonathan Cohn, 10 Thoughts on the “Grand Bargain” that just passed the MA Legislature yesterday
• Paul Krugman, The Return of the Blood Libel
• Shaun King, Separating Migrant Families Is Barbaric. It’s Also What the U.S. Has Been Doing to People of Color for Hundreds of Years.

Should read:

• Bruce Mohl, Putting a price on carbon gains momentum in Mass.
• Daniel Gatti, Massachusetts Senate Unanimously Endorses a Bold Vision for Clean Transportation
• David Roberts, Solar and wind are coming. And the power sector isn’t ready.
• Mike the Mad Biologist, Remembering Why The Office Of Technology Assessment Was Eliminated
• Hiroko Tabuchi, How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country
• Michael Maiello, Michael Bloomberg Isn’t a Moderate — He’s Just Out of Touch
• Tess Halpern, Owner of Haymarket Cafe decided to pay employees a ‘living wage’ three years ago; Here’s what happened

Worth reading:

• Dean Baker, When Both Men and Women Drop Out of the Labor Force, Why Do Economists Only Ask About Men?
• Gene Callahan, Distributism Is the Future
• Christian Roselund, Made in the USA [“The United States is seeing a minor renaissance in solar module manufacturing.”]
• Peter Baker, President Trump, Deal Maker? Not So Fast
• Oliver Willis, “Debate me!”: One of the dumbest conservative tricks
• Steve Almond, Democrats Need More Than An Anti-Trump Message To Win The Midterms
• Andiedigianni, Tricare to extend benefits to that girl you hooked up with two years ago   

Some reads from this week:

• Adam Gaffney, Single-Payer or Bust
• Jennifer Haberkorn, The 2 words you can’t say in a Democratic ad
• Ryan Cooper, The decline and fall of neoliberalism in the Democratic Party
• Lily Geismer and Matthew D. Lassiter, Turning Affluent Suburbs Blue Isn’t Worth the Cost
• Damon Young, I Have Post-Brokeness Stress Disorder
• Charley on the MTA, Talking with [MA Gubernatorial Candidate] Bob Massie at #Demvention

Must read

• Miles Howard, What Charlie Baker’s Popularity Says About The State Of The Commonwealth

Being cautious in the era of Trump and an extremist GOP Congress is neither courageous nor practical. It’s a form of distant and cowardly collaboration that ultimately enables the most rabidly partisan lawmakers to do their worst. It’s essentially saying to Donald Trump and his ilk, “I don’t like what you’re doing, but damnit, I’ll still work with you.” We are living in a moment when our economic opportunities, our access to medical care, our environment and our civil liberties are threatened each week. And the best that “America’s most popular governor” can do is make insincere and often vacuous gestures that do little but appease voters who long for the days of reasonable bipartisanship.

Massachusetts can do better. We have done better.

Why stop now?

On that theme

• Michael Hobbes, Millennials Are Screwed
• Aaron Bastani (NYT), Britain Isn’t Working
• Karl Marx on Alienation
• Alyssa Battistoni, Living, Not Just Surviving
• Ursala LeGuin, A War Without End
• Carol Cohn (NYT), The Perils of Mixing Masculinity and Missiles

Democrats

• Mike the Mad Biologist, What Does It Mean To Be A Democrat? The Robert Reich Edition
• Mike the Mad Biologist, Where Are The Grassroots ‘Moderates’?
• Mike the Mad Biologist,To Be A Successful Party, You Actually Have To Build  Your Party

Ending on a positive note

• Chad Orzel, Physics Is A Creative Endeavor

Must reads

• George Lakoff, Ten Points for Democracy Activists
• Jeff Stein, What Rep. John Conyers’s sweeping single-payer health care bill would actually do
• Neil Irwin, To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider the Janitors at Two Top Companies, Then and Now

Continue reading →

Reading material from the past 4+ months:

• Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam:  A Time to Break Silence
• Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail
• Joel Berg, It’s Policy, Stupid:  Why Progressives Need Real Solutions to Real Problems:

Stopping the other side from taking disastrous actions is necessary and empowering, but concretely improving the everyday lives of Americans is the best way to both win and govern. Progressives should aim for nothing less.

• Jack Meserve, Keep It Simple and Take Credit
• Sam Adler-Bell, A Tough-Love Letter to the Left:  A new book urges activists to avoid insularity and purism—and to focus on winning.
• George Lakoff on Trump’s moral challenge to liberals  [“To many, [Trump’s] lying doesn’t matter.”  That sounds hard to get past but I believe we can.]
• May Naomi Blank, Fights We Can Win
• Graham Vyse, How to Sell “Medicare for All” to All Americans
• Matt Bruenig, A Foundation, Not a Net
• James Kwak, The Importance of Fairness:  A New Economic Vision for the Democratic Party

Discourses on fairness from fifty years ago:

• Howard Axelrod, CEOs Have No Business Being Commencement Speakers

Continue reading →

• Nate Freiman, The Mensches of March
• Sophie McKeand, The Mythos We Live By:  I am Taliesin

• Erwin Chemerinsky, Embracing Federalism
• Garret Keizer, In Defense of Organized Religion
• Christian Parenti, Trump’s “Hard Power” Budget (“Donald Trump’s budget would make America even more authoritarian and militaristic than it already is.”)
• Andrew Bacevich, “Prepare, Pursue, Prevail!”
• Matt Bruenig, Opponents of single payer are moral monsters on par with AHCA proponents
• Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy
• Ian Welsh, The Basic Psychological Structure of Our Society Does Not Work
• Corey Robin, Socialism: Converting Hysterical Misery into Ordinary Unhappiness
• Strong Towns, 5 Stories to Get You Pumped About Spring Gardening

Must Read

• Rob Goodman, The Appeal of Trumpism to Traditionalists (“The work of David Gelernter helps explain why some intellectuals are attracted to the president’s authoritarian populism.”)

Should Read/Listen

• Anthony Brooks, How Trump’s Election Is Energizing Democrats In A Central Mass. Town [Ed.: I grew up in a neighboring town.  As the map indicates, it’s in a very red area of a generally blue state. I hear through my connections that Mr. O’Connell, their new DTC Treasurer, is a standup guy.  Don’t know the others mentioned.]
  
• Sarah Jones, J.D. Vance, the False Prophet of Blue America  (“The bestselling author of “Hillbilly Elegy” has emerged as the liberal media’s favorite white trash–splainer. But he is offering all the wrong lessons.”)
• Matthew Yglesias, Trump’s budget blueprint is a war on the future of the American economy (“Where we’re going, we won’t need science or education. Except we will.”)
• Steve Almond, Journalism And The Republican Health Plan: Covering Class Warfare Dressed Up As Policy
• Jeff Stein, Report: Trump voters in Michigan like economically populist Democrats [Ed.:  No kidding?  Who’d have guessed?]
• Jordan Weissman, A $15 Minimum Wage Would Give Almost Half of American Workers a Raise. Is That Crazy?
• Rebecca Solnit, Protest and persist: why giving up hope is not an option
• Chris Lehmann, The Betrayal of Democracy (“On finding Christopher Lasch in a Steve Bannon listicle.”)  [Ed.: If you’re not familiar with Lasch’s work then probably not worth reading but definitely so if you are.]
• The Nature Conservancy, Nature’s Benefits in Action: Floodplains Calm High Water, Create Wildlife Habitat

I’ve taken over as admin of our local Democratic Town Committee’s Facebook page and Twitter feed so I’ve shifted focus a bit from spending time reading articles of personal interest to more of a focus on cultivating common ground on political issues.  That stated, I haven’t stopped reading for personal interest.  (Side note:  If you have any insights on how to build a Twitter following, please let me know.)

• Cathy O’Neil, Bigger Data Isn’t Always Better Data
• Charlie Pierce, Paul Ryan Doesn’t Know How Insurance Works
• Ezra Klein, The GOP health bill doesn’t know what problem it’s trying to solve.  [Ed.:  Klein is actually a bit more pointed than that in his criticism.]
• Branco Marcetic, The Lie of ‘Rebuilding’ the Military
• The Big Idea:  Cat Sparks [From the post:  “In today’s Big Idea for her novel Lotus Blue, Australian author Cat Sparks talks about the enduring power of stupidity, and what it takes to save the world from it… or not.”]
• Jore, Forget Shorter Showers [Ed.:  A film with the words taken from an essay by Derrick Jensen.]
• Sylvia Linsteadt, The Mythos We Live By: Riding the Back of the Bear-King
• Martin Shaw, A Counsel of Resistance and Delight in the Face of Fear  [Ed.:  To adapt a phrase from Mr. Shaw, “@#$% the all the other links you see here. It’s time for a story.”]

And things Democratic party leadership needs to pay a lot more attention too (I think the majority of the rank-and-file gets this stuff but understanding is a bit slow to percolate up – looking at you Schumer, Pelosi, Hoyer, et al.  Giving Tom Perez a few months to get things in order before adding him to the list.):

• Eliza Newlin Carney and Matt Leistra, Q&A: Democrats Must Deliver an Economic Message
• Joan C. Williams and Heather Boushey, The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict:  The Poor, the Professionals, and the Missing Middle  [Ed.: From 2010.  Still relevant.]
• Mike the Mad Biologist, Now Would Be A Good Time For A Democratic Healthcare Plan Proposal