Year: 2020

Friday November 6, 2020 – Election Results Still in the Waiting Room As I wait for the electoral machinery to complete its work I am struck by how this election has confirmed that we are in a deep mess with nothing in sight to set us on a more productive --->> read more -->>

A recent study of the Boston area real estate market reveals continuing discrimination against people of color.  

An introduction to monopolies and book review of Zephyr Teachout’s new book Break’Em Up: recovering our freedom from big ag, big tech, and big money, All Points Books, 2020. What are monopolies? How monopolized (concentrated) is the US economy Examples of how monopolization works and its effects The history of --->> read more -->>

Capitalism features a structural drive to create and use external costs to increase profits. Pollution of the earth is the most obvious and visible; there are many others including injuries and death for workers.

Introducing the In Depth series on the actual workings of capitalism. Commentary on economic theories.  

Trump and his Republican enablers – the Trumplicans –  are responsible for the pandemic in the US and the nearly 200k deaths that have occurred to date. Comparing the US response with the rest of the world makes it clear that this catastrophe is the direct result of Trumplican policies. --->> read more -->>

Wondering What White Supremacy Looks Like? The Boston Globe reported on July 1, 2020 on the results of a study by Suffolk University Law School, “Qualified Renters Need Not Apply” (link downloads the PDF of the study) from the Globe report: An undercover investigation released Wednesday found that Black people --->> read more -->>

It is absolutely clear that Trump and Republicans (Trumplicans) are to blame for the state we find ourselves in. Trump and Republicans can talk all they want about “Wuhan virus” and other racist slurs. There is no other explanation for the tremendous surge in COVID-19 cases across the southern belt --->> read more -->>

The recent upheavals around the killing of George Floyd and police violence more broadly has been surprising in its breadth and scope. In the midst of this, new discussion of reparations has surfaced. I have not actively thought about this topic since the widely read and cited article The Case --->> read more -->>

Anonymity is a plague in our lives, public and private. The web is filled with anonymous material authored by anonymous creators. Facebook is filled with millions of anonymous fake people who are really, it frequently turns out,  paid actors for various political and economic actors. Our local web-based social platforms --->> read more -->>

If you are struggling to get your head around how racism works you will probably find it helpful to have a general framework as a guide. This one hour lecture from 2017 features an overview by Brown University Professor Tricia Rose of the structure of racism and how it works --->> read more -->>

The May 21, 2020 Issue of the London Review of Books contains a review article, “The Corrupt Bargain” by Columbia U. Professor Eric Foner. It is a wonderful review of the history of this peculiar institution, The Electoral College. In the midst of his survey of the history of the --->> read more -->>

Kristof and WuDunn’s book, Tightrope – Americans Reaching for Hope, spent some weeks on bestseller lists. Kristof is a well known reporter and writer for the NYTimes. It centers around the town of Yamhill OR and the people that Kristof grew up among. The stories of industrial decline, increasing inequality, --->> read more -->>

[1]When Congress passed the second pandemic stimulus bill, the CARES Act, in late March, a key feature was the Paycheck Protection Program(PPP). This was $349 billion described as targeted to small businesses (in the world of the Federal government small businesses have long been defined as having fewer than 500 --->> read more -->>

The decline of the US has become so marked over the last few decades that the stories and numbers no longer shock. From a country with an enormous middle class we have become a country with rich, super-rich and big corporations at the top while the vast majority, more than --->> read more -->>

Back in the early and mid ‘70s both Karen and I worked in various machine shops and other industrial locations. Trichloroethylene (TCE) was used on a daily basis to clean metals parts and other materials. I remember a large tank of slowly roiling hot TCE at Stevens Arnold, Inc. in --->> read more -->>

Human beings have always been attracted to images. From early cave paintings to traveling displays of giant canvases by the Hudson River school of painters to TV and on now into the ubiquity of images in the digital era, we pay attention. Marketers have known this and exploited it to --->> read more -->>

The Criminal Justice System In recent years many people have taken note of the US lead in incarceration in all its racist wonder. Our nearest competitor, Russia, lags by 40% while our competitor cohort, Germany, France, Japan, and so on, incarcerate a mere 1/10 or less of our world-leading rate. --->> read more -->>

“Who Killed the Knapp Family?” by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn appeared in the Sunday 1/12/2020 NYTimes. This essay which is adapted from a newly published book by the same authors, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, explores the grim reality of life in one small corner of America, Yamhill, OR --->> read more -->>