Affordability: This Math Ain't Mathing
Life in the United States for the lower 75% of income earners has become unaffordable. For people in the bottom 25% it's a full blown crisis. This has been...
When Labor Won, Wall Street Revolted: Affordability, Part 3
Welcome to the rare midweek edition of Takes & Typos. I am coming to you today because last Thursday Hope had a minor surgical procedure and I spent most of...
The High Cost of Capitulation
I’m going to keep today’s newsletter relatively brief because we are traveling. We’re on our way back from a weekend in Al Ain, in the interior of UAE. It is...
The Fifty Year Mortgage
Last week we wrapped our series on wealth consolidation and the billionaire class. But you all, and the impunity of the oligarchs, keep dragging me back in....
Oligarchs, Empathy, and Truth – A Reader Mailbag
Greetings from an undisclosed location in Doha, Qatar, where I’m chaperoning a group of kids at an interscholastic academic competition. It’s been a...
What Protests? Media Made by Oligarchs
I learned a long time ago that I'm not very good at making predictions, so I usually avoid doing so. However, in the aftermath of yesterday's "No Kings"...
Oligarchy Degrades Everything - Health Care Edition
Corporations deciding which diseases are “worth” curing, which lives are “worth” saving breeds despair. That, that quiet despair, is the deepest moral cost of oligarchy.
The Billionaires are the Problem
There have always been ultra-wealthy people in the US. But the oligarchs of our time wield political influence that the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age could only have dreamed of.
In Defense of Immigration (or Billionaires Are the Real Problem)
Immigration is the animating issue of modern US politics and the driver of far-right movements in Europe. The President entered the political scene with the...
Radicalized Before They Can Rent a Car
A 2022 shooting in Buffalo targeting the city’s Black community was carried out by a 18 year-old white supremacist Pardon the brevity of this week's...
Our Crisis Spiral
Since I woke up to the news on Thursday, I've had the entire newsletter for this week planned out. I was going to spend Sunday afternoon watching the Premier...
A Bad Idea Done Badly
Imagine being the proprietor of a convenience store or liquor store. Then, imagine being told by the government that you not only need to check the...
Protecting the Truth
Happy Sunday and greetings from hazy and humid Abu Dhabi. We already have one week of school in the books here in the Gulf. Subscribe now Last week I argued...
In the Absence of Truth
Tuesday is the first teaching day of my 20th year in the classroom. I spent last week in meetings with my colleagues gearing up for the year ahead. I have a...
In Praise of Andor
On Tuesday we returned from Viet Nam. After being on the road for so long, I was eager to get back to familiar confines. Unfortunately, I came home with a...
More Ideologues, Fewer Partisans
Me, my boy Brian, Hope, and our tour guide, sweating in these Saigon streets Greetings from Ho Chi Minh City (although everyone here still calls it Saigon)....
It's Giving Subprime Vibes
I'm going to do something different this week and give away the ending and let you decide if you want to stick around: If you're skeptical of Bitcoin, you're...
Lessons From the My Mom's Church & Summer Reading
Greetings from the Great State of Washington, It’s been a minute. Given how regimented my schedule normally is, summers home feel weird. I mostly spend them...
Breaking Up with Google Search
Today's newsletter is a bit of a hodgepodge. Hope and I are back in Tacoma and spending quality time with family along with attending our usual events and...
LA Police Riots and "Everything is Tuberculosis"
Police in LA assaulting to a prone protestor - Photo: ANI I sat down today with every intention of writing about the ongoing situation in Los Angeles. But I...