tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90066243707948261242024-03-13T10:09:49.603-04:00Conscience Warrior NewsfeedCurated Economic and Political News and CommentaryConscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comBlogger2896125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-27800191358254251062018-11-20T12:00:00.000-05:002018-11-20T12:00:15.164-05:00The Right-Wingers Behind the Mueller Smear Campaign Are Guilty of Everything They Accuse Democrats of DoingThe right-wing canard that Democratic operatives pay women to invent allegations of sexual assault also looks particularly rich this week, in light of allegations by two women that men who identified themselves as Burkman and an unnamed Surefire employee offered them money to talk about nonexistent encounters with Mueller. <br />
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<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/jacob-wohl-jack-burkman-robert-mueller-smear.html" target="_blank">Christina Cauterucci</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-51197935679068276392018-11-19T12:00:00.000-05:002018-11-19T12:00:08.980-05:00The WaldensiansWhat one small town’s celebration of immigration tells us about how white Americans think about history. <br />
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<a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/10/valdese-north-carolina-waldensian-immigration.html" target="_blank">Molly Edmonds</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-82101205421309274512018-11-16T11:30:00.000-05:002018-11-16T11:30:12.318-05:00After Fanning the Flames of Anti-Semitism, Trump Is Hiding Behind the Pro-Israel Defense<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/trump-anti-semitism-pittsburgh-shooter-israel.html" target="_blank">Jordan Weissmann</a>
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<br />Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-42344041010610011712018-11-15T15:01:00.000-05:002018-11-15T15:01:03.690-05:00The hack gap: how and why conservative nonsense dominates American politicsInsulting rank-and-file Republicans (even if it was only about half of them) was treated as a huge national scandal. Republican Party politicians and conservative pundits harped on the line, providing a point of party unity at a time when many party and movement stalwarts were reluctant to actually praise Trump. The mainstream press covered the controversy intensively, and left-of-center pundits weighed in with a range of takes, including one from yours truly, which concluded that Clinton really had messed up by violating “the norm against attacking the other party’s constituents” rather than its politicians.<br />
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This past Friday, meanwhile, President Trump said that 100 percent of people planning to vote Democratic in the upcoming midterms — a majority of the electorate, in other words — are “crazy.” Nobody cared and almost nobody even noticed.<br />
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/10/23/18004478/hack-gap-explained" target="_blank">Matthew Yglesias</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-78671984474982246362018-11-14T14:56:00.000-05:002018-11-14T14:56:00.465-05:00A White House report points out that Mao and I both like low health care costs. True, but…Health care systems where the government sets prices are more efficient than those where prices vary dramatically from one health plan to another, and this lowers costs across the board for patients. As Mao, Lenin, and I all agree (as do leaders of every other wealthy planet in the world): That’s a good thing.<br />
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/23/18014274/white-house-mao-health-care" target="_blank">Sarah Kliff</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-33901802845758637812018-11-13T14:55:00.000-05:002018-11-13T14:55:13.052-05:00The White House, definitely not scared of socialism, issues report on why socialism is badBecause Swedes can’t afford pickup trucks. Also because Stalin.<br />
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/23/18013872/white-house-socialism-report-cea-mao-lenin-bernie-sanders" target="_blank">Dylan Matthews</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-91557008819574998652018-11-12T12:00:00.000-05:002018-11-12T12:00:04.996-05:00The looming danger of non-banksThe most likely cause of a future financial crisis isn't the banks, it's the non-banks. They're enormous, they're much less regulated than banks are, and they tend to have much greater leverage. <br />
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<a href="https://www.axios.com/prudential-non-banks-future-financial-crises-f21319bf-7104-4109-9f11-a8d369110e0c.html" target="_blank">Felix Salmon</a><br />
<br />Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-41264209017275243252018-11-09T10:19:00.000-05:002018-11-09T10:19:17.107-05:004 ways to fix "fake news"If your Facebook feed is filled with garbage, it means you were reading garbage in the first place. The algorithm simply gives you more of what you crave. <br />
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<a href="https://www.axios.com/fake-news-fix-suggestions-politicians-social-media-f20fa11b-5a19-4015-bc30-fdc19896ca50.html" target="_blank">Jim VandeHei</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-64971487891314943452018-11-08T11:30:00.000-05:002018-11-08T11:30:06.648-05:00Donald Trump’s Perverse AdvantageBut the media focus on her misjudgment, her character and whether she had the right stuff for the White House underscores the absurdity of our current politics, in terms of the advantage it confers on the president. We expect much of anyone stepping forward to challenge him. We expect absolutely nothing of him. <br />
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<a href="https://politicalwire.com/2018/10/20/donald-trumps-perverse-advantage/" target="_blank">Frank Bruni</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-10664348725753648922018-11-07T11:50:00.000-05:002018-11-07T11:50:00.231-05:00This is exactly how a nuclear war would kill you<a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/19/17873822/nuclear-war-weapons-bombs-how-kill" target="_blank">Alex Ward</a>
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<br />Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-55583684740352024992018-11-06T13:17:00.000-05:002018-11-06T13:17:14.626-05:00The biggest lie Trump tells is that he’s kept his promisesA raft of populist pledges have been left on the cutting room floor. <br />
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/10/18/17990626/trump-promises-made-promises-broken" target="_blank">Matthew Yglesias</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-59226685556934672722018-11-05T11:00:00.000-05:002018-11-05T11:00:02.408-05:00Even janitors have noncompetes now. Nobody is safe.One of the central contradictions of capitalism is that what makes it work — competition — is also what capitalists want to get rid of the most.
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/18/even-janitors-have-noncompetes-now-nobody-is-safe/" target="_blank">Matt O'Brien</a>
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<br />Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-46416237269658462312018-11-02T12:00:00.000-04:002018-11-02T12:00:03.374-04:00The Man Who Broke Politics<div class="WordSection1">
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There’s something about Newt Gingrich that seems to capture the spirit of America circa 2018. With his immense head and white mop of hair; his cold, boyish grin; and his high, raspy voice, he has the air of a late-empire Roman senator—a walking bundle of appetites and excesses and hubris and wit. In conversation, he toggles unnervingly between grandiose pronouncements about “Western civilization” and partisan cheap shots that seem tailored for cable news. It’s a combination of self-righteousness and smallness, of pomposity and pettiness, that personifies the decadence of this era.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But few figures in modern history have done more than Gingrich to lay the groundwork for Trump’s rise. During his two decades in Congress, he pioneered a style of partisan combat—replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism—that poisoned America’s political culture and plunged Washington into permanent dysfunction. Gingrich’s career can perhaps be best understood as a grand exercise in devolution—an effort to strip American politics of the civilizing traits it had developed over time and return it to its most primal essence.<o:p></o:p></div>
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These days, Gingrich seems to be revising his legacy in real time—shifting the story away from the ideological sea change that his populist disruption was supposed to enable, and toward the act of populist disruption itself. He places his own rise to power and Trump’s in the same grand American narrative. There have been four great political “waves” in the past half century, he tells me: “Goldwater, Reagan, Gingrich, then Trump.” But when I press him to explain what connects those four “waves” philosophically, the best he can do is say they were all “anti-liberal.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/" target="_blank">McKay Coppins</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-44141786123080778642018-11-01T10:00:00.000-04:002018-11-01T10:00:05.747-04:00Trump Says The Federal Reserve Is the “Biggest Threat” to His Presidency. So Why Hasn’t He Done Anything About It?Ultimately, Trump’s goal in criticizing the central bank seems to be distancing himself from any damage they inadvertently inflict on the economy. But the president has had the opportunity to pick a Fed board that would better reflect his own intuitions about interest rates. If his failure to do so backfires on the economy, he’ll deserve all the blame that inevitably comes his way. <br />
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<a href="https://slate.com/business/2018/10/trump-federal-reserve-jerome-powell-fired.html" target="_blank">Jordan Weissmann</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-51785097537578920102018-10-31T12:30:00.000-04:002018-10-31T12:30:12.610-04:00The rigging of American politicsPolitical systems depend on legitimacy. In America, that legitimacy is failing.<br />
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/16/17951596/kavanaugh-trump-senate-impeachment-avenatti-democrats-2020-supreme-court" target="_blank">Ezra Klein</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-36745601298161424862018-10-30T12:00:00.000-04:002018-10-30T12:00:12.205-04:00Proportional representation could save America<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/15/17979210/proportional-representation-could-save-america" target="_blank">Matthew Yglesias</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-19058913510200221572018-10-29T09:42:00.000-04:002018-10-29T09:42:05.581-04:00Max Boot, Jackie Robinson, and the racism problem in the Republican PartyMax Boot could have had an awakening decades ago — if he’d listened to black conservatives. <br />
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/10/12/17955400/max-boot-trump-conservatism-gop-goldwater" target="_blank">Jane Coaston</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-8193410307317641292018-10-26T11:00:00.000-04:002018-10-26T11:00:08.583-04:00Why More Dictators Are Killing and Abducting Dissidents AbroadAn effective authoritarian state needs its most prominent critics to know that an <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/trotsky-assassinated-in-mexico" target="_blank">ice ax in the back</a> is still a possibility, even if they leave. <br />
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<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/jamal-khashoggi-meng-hongwei-assassination-abduction-dictators.html" target="_blank">Joshua Keating</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-14424769452718681182018-10-25T12:00:00.000-04:002018-10-25T12:00:06.750-04:00Economic Growth, Technological Change, and Climate Change<a href="http://www.economicsandethics.org/2018/10/economic-growth-technological-change-and-climate-change.html" target="_blank">Jonathan Wight</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-28217324067553917032018-10-24T11:40:00.000-04:002018-10-24T11:40:05.444-04:00It’s better to be born rich than giftedA revolution in genomics is creeping into economics. It allows us to say something we might have suspected, but could never confirm: money trumps genes. Using one new, genome-based measure, economists found genetic endowments are distributed almost equally among children in low-income and high-income families. Success is not. The least-gifted children of high-income parents graduate from college at higher rates than the most-gifted children of low-income parents. <br />
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/09/its-better-be-born-rich-than-talented/" target="_blank">Andrew Van Dam</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-36198125204883121912018-10-23T11:49:00.000-04:002018-10-23T11:49:05.416-04:00Why this political scientist thinks the Democrats have to fight dirtyI think Democrats should have this debate, but my point is that no policy platform is going to win three or four consecutive national elections for Democrats because we know policy isn’t what decides elections; that’s not how most voters make decisions. <br />
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People just don’t seem to make the connection between policies and the party in power.<br /><br />So, for example, the Democrats passed Obamacare and gave millions of people heath care, and yet tons of people who benefited from it have no idea what it is or how they benefited. And it’s like that with a lot of policies — voters simply don’t connect the dots, and so they reward or punish the wrong party.<br />
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I think the idea that we’re going to deliver these benefits to people and they’re going to be like, “Thank you Jesus, thank you for everything that you’ve done, let me return you with a larger majority next time,” is just nonsense. It’s the wrong way to think about politics. <br />
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I don’t think we can restore order by respecting rules that are not respected by Republicans. I do believe we’ll have to find a way to end this procedural war at some point, but now is not that time. Republicans need to know what it’s like to be on the other end of normative violations. The Republicans are behaving like a party that believes it will never be held accountable for anything they’re doing, and so far they haven’t been.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/5/1/17258866/democratic-party-supreme-court-republicans-trump-election" target="_blank">David Faris & Sean Illing</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-18488272056647909452018-10-22T12:00:00.000-04:002018-10-22T12:00:08.497-04:00We Don’t Need to Replace the BQE, But We Will“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” -Abraham Maslow<br />
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It should be no surprise that to every highway engineer the solution to traffic is always more roads. In this case, it is the NYC DOT, which last week announced their initial plan to rebuild the crumbling Brooklyn Heights cantilevered section of the BQE from Atlantic Ave to Sands St. <br />
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<a href="http://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2018/10/we-dont-need-to-replace-the-bqe-but-we-will/" target="_blank">Andrew Lynch</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-82634661574203343252018-10-19T11:00:00.000-04:002018-10-19T11:00:10.245-04:00‘This guy doesn’t know anything’: the inside story of Trump’s shambolic transition team Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and The Big Short, reveals how Trump’s bungled presidential transition set the template for his time in the White House<br />
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<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/27/this-guy-doesnt-know-anything-the-inside-story-of-trumps-shambolic-transition-team" target="_blank">Michael Lewis</a><br />
<br />Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-85372481004923306462018-10-18T11:30:00.000-04:002018-10-18T11:30:05.348-04:00It’s Time for Democrats to Play Hardball With the FBIOne has to consider only that Republicans have spent years accusing former FBI director and lifelong Republican James Comey of orchestrating a cover-up for Hillary Clinton to understand how the GOP would react if, say, an FBI investigation into a Democratic Supreme Court nominee was being overseen by a graduate of the nominee’s law school and a former colleague.<br />
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It’s time for Democrats to realize that the rules have changed. It’s not enough to simply rely on most federal law enforcement officials being well-intentioned, nonpolitical figures trying to do the right thing under tough circumstances.<br />
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<a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/03/kavanaugh-allegations-fbi-investigation-politicize-220843" target="_blank">Matthew Miller</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006624370794826124.post-19924808739369302742018-10-17T11:30:00.000-04:002018-10-17T11:30:08.498-04:00Brett Kavanaugh proves the Never Trump movement was a sham all alongThis is actually how we got Trump. <br />
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/4/17936664/brett-kavanaugh-republicans-never-trump-sham" target="_blank">Zack Beauchamp</a>Conscience Warriorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13487448481194494386noreply@blogger.com