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Vol. 29 No. 3Summer 2018
Notebook
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The Emblem of This Era
The Tax Act sums it all up—grotesque favoritism for the rich and a corrupt legislative process. And it’s already backfiring.
Features
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Part I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got TherePart I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got There
The Top Ten Fallacies About the New Trump-GOP Tax Act
Like most of Donald Trump’s policy agenda (and the rest of his career and life), the GOP tax cut has been sold on bluster, exaggeration, and outright lies. Here are ten of the biggest myths associated with the 2017 Republican Tax Act. -
Part I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got There
The Two Biggest Lies in Donald Trump's Tax Plan
The tax plan was always going to be a huge giveaway to corporations. And the individual tax cuts were always heavily tilted to the top. -
Part I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got There
How the Tax Act Embodies the Republican Culture of Corruption
The Tax Act is a Christmas tree of special-interest tax breaks. The only thing more corrupt than the substance was the way it was enacted. -
Part I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got There
The Tax Act That Lost Its Name
The Senate parliamentarian scotched the Republicans’ plan for a simple bill title. -
Part I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got There
The Koch Brothers' Best Investment
How a $40 million political outlay yields a $500 million tax cut. -
Part II: Language and Message: Making It ToxicPart II: Language and Message: Making It Toxic
Talking Taxes with the Voters
The more people learn about the Tax Act, the less they like it. -
Part II: Language and Message: Making It Toxic
The Broad Support for Taxing the Wealthy
Why Democrats should run on rolling back the tax cut and raising taxes on the rich -
Part I: What's in the Tax Act, and How It Got There
The Democrats' Response
Far from giving Republicans bragging rights, the Tax Act presents Democrats with a potent line of attack. But can they stay united when they put forth their own alternatives? -
Part II: Language and Message: Making It Toxic
Party Animals
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Part III: The Fake Claims, Debunking the MythsPart III: The Fake Claims, Debunking the Myths
Why the Tax Act Will Not Boost Investment
Will lower corporate taxes generate an investment boom? The evidence suggests not. -
Part III: The Fake Claims, Debunking the Myths
The Curse of Stock Buybacks
For the past three decades, the overriding priority of American corporations has been paying their shareholders. That’s just what they’ve done with their tax cut. -
Part III: The Fake Claims, Debunking the Myths
Raises and Bonuses: The PR Fraud
Republicans and corporations tried to convince Americans that their employees would be rewarded. But only 4 percent of workers have gotten bonuses or raises. -
Part III: The Fake Claims, Debunking the Myths
A Lost Opportunity to Help Small Business
For Main Street small businesses, the benefits of the Tax Act are peanuts. Nearly half of all the savings go to people making over $1 million a year. -
Part III: The Fake Claims, Debunking the Myths
Gutting the AMT
Just to be sure that no wealthy taxpayer is left behind, the Tax Act destroys the Alternative Minimum Tax. -
Part IV: The ConsequencesPart IV: The Consequences
Demonizing the IRS to Protect Tax Evaders
Weakening tax enforcement combined with new complexity invites evasion and massive illicit tax savings for the rich. -
Part IV: The Consequences
Massive Spending Cuts: The Tax Act's Hidden Costs
Republicans rediscovered the peril of the enlarged deficit—as a pretext for gutting social spending. -
Part IV: The Consequences
How the Tax Act Undercuts Health-Care Reform
Ending the individual mandate will inflate premiums in the Obamacare marketplaces—especially for the middle class. -
Part IV: The Consequences
Accelerating the Death of Real Jobs
The Tax Act adds insidious new incentives to turn more jobs into casual contract work. -
Part IV: The Consequences
The Tax Act Actually Promotes Off-Shore Tax Tricks
The Tax Act creates additional incentives to shift income offshore for purposes of tax avoidance, and what is worse, it creates incentives to shift actual jobs. -
Part IV: The Consequences
Worsening Inequality
The Tax Act worsens inequality both in the tax changes and in the program cuts used to address the resulting deficit. -
Part IV: The Consequences
The Harm to Affordable Housing
By cutting rates for the wealthy, the Tax Act slashes the value of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. -
Part IV: The Consequences
Penalizing Marriage for the Poor
Incredibly, the Tax Act actually punishes low-income people for getting married. -
Part IV: The Consequences
How the Tax Cut Sacks Puerto Rico
For the Puerto Rican economy, already bleeding jobs and citizens after a decade-long recession compounded by Hurricane Maria, the Republican tax overhaul was one more blow. -
Part IV: The Consequences
Denying the Child Tax Credit to Undocumented Children
A little-noticed provision in the Republican tax reform will strip billions in tax benefits from an estimated one million mostly low-income undocumented children residing in the United States. -
Part V: The FuturePart V: The Future
What Else Could We Do with $1.9 Trillion?
If we spent that money on infrastructure rather than tax cuts for the rich, we would get better economic performance and more good jobs. -
Part V: The Future
Want to Expand the Economy? Tax the Rich!
If Democrats want to win big in November, they must do more than just renounce trickle-down economics. They need to replace it. -
Part V: The Future
The Long Game on Taxes
It’s not too soon to start thinking about the tax reforms we need and the strategy for getting there. -
Part V: The Future
How to Restore Taxes on Inheritances
With the estate tax further weakened, is it time to pivot to an inheritance tax? -
Part V: The Future
Principles for Tax Reform
The 2017 Tax Act not only harmed most Americans, but upstaged true, overdue reforms. Here are some key elements, as themes for both politics and policy.
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Vol. 29 No. 2Spring 2018
Columns
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The Democratic Emergency
This is American democracy's stress test. We have only limited time to pass it.
Notebook
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What Now for Unions?
Republicans on and off the bench are moving to kill unions. But millennials—the most pro-union generation since the 1930s—may yet find a way to organize. -
Puerto Rican Refugees and the Elusive Blue Wave
Emigres from the island could be recruited to the Democratic camp, but will progressive organizing defeat right-wing money that ties relief to recruiting? -
Turning the Southwest Blue with 'Brown and Beautiful' Millennials
Want to flip Texas and Arizona? Nearly one million Latino citizens turn 18 every year.
Culture
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Democracy and Its Discontents
Three authors engage with the threats to a liberal society. -
Corporate Power and the Unmaking of American Democracy
How corporations became legal “persons” and how we the people might regain sovereignty
Features
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Martin Luther King Jr.: The Prophet as Healer
Whether by example or by strategy, Dr. King always looked for opportunities to build bridges. -
Robert F. Kennedy: Teachings for Today
RFK had an uncanny capacity to reach across racial lines. He learned by listening and empathizing. -
How the Globalists Ceded the Field to Donald Trump
Unless the mainstream offers something better, he will be the voice of economic nationalism. -
How Not to Cover America
As local newspapers shrink and many of the national media close local bureaus, we depend increasingly on coverage by reporters who parachute into communities. But even the best are likely to be a step behind events. -
Connecting Public Transit to Great Manufacturing Jobs
Madeline Janis, who pioneered local hiring agreements, is now enlisting cities to have railcars and buses made in America—by union workers. -
Mobility and Social Justice
Ridesharing Versus Public Transit
How Uber and Lyft tend to widen disparities of race and class in urban transportation systems -
Why America Needs More Social Housing
Subsidizing market prices to make housing affordable is a losing strategy. There’s a better way—on display for a century in Vienna. -
Catching a Breeze
America's belated push to develop offshore wind energy -
Moving People, Not Cars
Dedicated lanes for bikes and buses are a great idea. But there is only so much city street to go around. The missing link? Limiting cars. -
Putting the Public First in Public-Private Partnerships
Public-sector competence is needed to make sure citizens get a good deal—and private vendors are no substitute for adequate public funding. -
How to Keep Social Security Secure
Here’s a plan that eliminates the long-term shortfall in its finances and updates the system for the 21st century. -
West Virginia Teachers Won Their Strike. Now, They’re Rebuilding the Local Economy.
How the American Federation of Teachers has taken the lead in reinvigorating the poorest county in the state -
Sharing the Tech Wealth
Tech jobs tend to cluster geographically. Can we spread the benefits around?
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Vol. 29 No. 1Winter 2018
Notebook
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The Other Imperiled Immigrants
For no good reason, other than spite and symbolism, Trump goes after Central American immigrants with Temporary Protected Status. -
Donald Trump Is No Friend of a Better NAFTA
We do need to repair or replace what's wrong with the mother of bad trade deals. But don't be fooled by Trump's posturing. -
The Full Employment Solution
Truly fixing the American economy requires full employment, as Franklin Roosevelt proposed 74 years ago. And that can't be done through the private sector alone.
Culture
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The Poverty on Disney’s Doorstep
TAP Goes to the Oscars: The Florida Project is a film about life as a poor kid. It doesn’t erase the innocence of childhood—or the harshness of poverty. -
Up Against Big Tech
The old challenges of concentrated economic and political power now confront us in new forms. -
No Big-Game Hunting at Justice
How federal prosecutors let major white-collar criminals off the hook and stick shareholders with the costs of corporate crime -
Is Manufacturing’s Future All Used Up?
Though the efforts to revive our much shrunken industrial sector may seem quixotic, manufacturing still matters to the nation’s economy—and its psyche.
Features
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Big Tech: The New Predatory Capitalism
The tech giants are menacing democracy, privacy, and competition. Can they be housebroken? -
Saving the Free Press From Private Equity
Navigating the digital transition is a huge challenge for newspapers. Absentee ownership by private equity predators makes it all but impossible. -
The New Reformer DAs
As cities grow more progressive, a new breed of prosecutors are winning office and upending the era of lock-’em-up justice. They may hold the key to resisting Trump’s mania for mass incarceration. -
The Two Sides of Immigration Policy
We need to legalize the undocumented already here, but open borders will mean lower wages for American workers. -
A Fabulous Failure: Clinton’s 1990s and the Origins of Our Times
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The Forgotten Origins of the Constitution on Campus
Foes of hateful speech should remember how free expression was protected on campus in the first place—through the civil rights movement. -
The New Health Care AgendaThe New Health Care Agenda
A New Strategy for Health Care
Looking beyond Trump, Democrats ought to focus on opening Medicare to people at age 50 and capping excessive health-care prices. -
The New Health Care Agenda
The Road to Medicare for Everyone
Here’s how we get past the political obstacles that have kept America from making affordable health care a right. -
The New Health Care Agenda
The Next Big Thing in Health Reform: Where to Start?
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The New Health Care Agenda
Capping Provider Payment: An Alternative to a Public Option
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The New Health Care Agenda
Health-Care Reform’s Disability Blind Spot
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The New Health Care Agenda
Buying Into Medicaid: A Viable Path for Universal Coverage
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Redemption for Offenders and Victims
A new variation on an age-old tradition helps criminal defendants redeem their lives, far more effectively than prison does. -
The Battle of the Georgetown Mill
To black workers in this picturesque South Carolina town, the unionized steel mill anchors their community. To the town’s white civic leaders, it blocks Georgetown’s gentrification. For the past two years, they’ve been fighting it out. -
Gateway To Nowhere on the Hudson
Donald Trump could well kill more funds for the construction of critical rail infrastructure projects—which doesn’t bode well for the Northeast. -
The Congressional Review Act: A Damage Assessment
How Trump’s Republicans have used an obscure Gingrich-era law to eviscerate health, safety, labor, environmental, and financial protections
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Vol. 28 No. 4Fall 2017
Columns
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An American Way for America Now
Why the country needs a Democratic party that knows it needs white working-class voters
Notebook
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Low Unemployment Doesn't Increase Wages Like It Used To
Full employment is still necessary, but rebuilding the middle class also requires dethroning shareholders and boosting worker power. -
Weakening Medicaid From Within
The Trump administration is poised to misuse its legal authority in an effort to cull people from the Medicaid rolls. -
When Soft Power Salutes Despots
American diplomacy once leaned against aspiring dictators. But Trump found reasons to cozy up to Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte at this week’s ASEAN meetings. -
It Will Take More Than Single-Payer to Make Baltimore Healthy
More than lack of access to health care, the ongoing legacies of Jim Crow diminish African Americans’ health.
Culture
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How She Lost
Malpractice cost Clinton the election, but her ambivalence on big issues was produced by big structural factors that affect all Democrats. -
Where the Republican Party Began
Sidney Blumenthal's new volume in his biography of Lincoln explores the role of leadership in the remaking of American politics in the 1850s. -
Can Love Conquer Hate?
Will the increasing prevalence of intermarriage lead to broader empathy and understanding?
Features
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The American HeartbreakThe American Heartbreak
Despair Is Not an Option
The Trump presidency is not the end of the American story. -
The American Heartbreak
What Will It Take for Black Lives to Matter?
Nonviolent, cross-racial coalitions are the only way back to a decent America. -
The American Heartbreak
White Nationalism and Economic Nationalism
Democrats can't compete with Bannon on racism—and shouldn't—but they can certainly outdo him when it comes to good jobs. -
Unfriendly Skies
It’s time to admit that airline deregulation has failed passengers, workers—and economic efficiency. -
Slaying the Partisan Gerrymander
With extreme gerrymanders on the rise, it is time for the Supreme Court—and the states—to curb a practice that has gotten out of control. -
Francis Revives the Workers’ Church
The Catholic Church in America—once an ally of workers and their unions—grew deferential to big money in recent decades. Now, prompted by the Pope, a new generation of labor priests and bishops is trying to change that. -
Real Tax Reform: What It Is and What It Isn’t
Trump’s proposed tax cuts, mostly on corporations and the wealthy, will do nothing to help the people who elected him president. -
The Freedom Caucus’s Man on the Inside
Mick Mulvaney has his dream job as director of OMB. Given the general chaos in Trump-world, what can he make of it? -
Not Britain’s Finest Hour
If Brexit actually happens, those most harmed will be the people who voted for it. How did Britain get into such a mess, and how might she yet muddle out of it? -
France and Germany: An Aging Couple Carries On
Merkel and Macron need each other, as emblems of a still vital European center. But can Macron deliver more than symbols, and will Merkel take her foot off Europe’s oxygen hose? -
The Proselytizers and the Privatizers
How religious sectarian school voucher extremists made useful idiots of the charter movement -
Desegregated, Differently
Half of Hartford’s schoolkids attend integrated schools, thanks to a legal strategy that might work elsewhere. -
Fossil-Free Finance
The surprising successes of the divestment movement as an anti-carbon organizing strategy
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Vol. 3 No. 28Summer 2017
Columns
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The European Mirror
Is there any way out of the dialectic of neoliberal policies producing economic backlash and support for the nationalist far right?
Notebook
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Settlements: The Real Story
Fifty years after the Six-Day War, a mistaken account of how settlement began still plagues Israeli politics. -
Silk Roadblock
Yo-Yo Ma's celebrated project for global understanding through music runs into Donald Trump's sour note. -
Ignoring Police Violence
Baltimore officials accepted a voluntary settlement to reduce police abuses. Jeff Sessions wants to kill it.
Culture
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Fiscal Purgatory in New York
How New York’s budget crisis was used to roll back expansive government -
The Long Arc of Protest
While digital media make it easier to spread activist messages, today’s movements face many of the same problems their forerunners did. -
Gift Horse or Trojan Horse?
The mixed record of America’s new rich as often self-interested philanthropists -
State-Enforced Segregation and the Color of Justice
Jim Crow was the descendant of Southern slavery. More shocking is the legacy of government-enforced racism in the North. -
Goodbye to All That Democracy
Can our constitution co-exist with extremes of economic inequality?
Features
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The Wages of NeglectThe Wages of Neglect
Place Matters
As in the 1930s, progressives need economic development strategies for the left-behind regions of the country. -
The Wages of Neglect
The Democrats’ ‘Working-Class Problem’
It’s not only with whites. It reaches well into the party’s base. -
The Wages of Neglect
A Tale of Two Populisms
The elite the white working class loathes is politicians. -
The Wages of Neglect
Democrats Need to Be the Party of and for Working People—of All Races
And they can’t retake Congress unless they win over more white workers. -
The Wages of Neglect
Why the White Worker Theme Is Harmful
It’s a mistake to racialize an economy that harms the entire working class. -
Kansas, Sam Brownback, and the Trickle-Down Implosion
The Kansas governor’s attempt to create supply-side nirvana in Middle America not only failed to grow the economy—it created a crippling crisis of government that led to a statewide rejection of his politics. -
Private Equity: The New Neighborhood Loan Sharks
Veterans of the Contract Buyers League hit the doors again. -
Who Is Wilbur Ross?
From bankruptcy king to Trump’s king of commerce -
Will Trump Kill the CFPB?
Created in response to the financial crisis, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned nearly $12 billion to consumers—which may be exactly why it’s now under threat. -
The Great Los Angeles Revolt Against Cars
L.A. voters have chosen to tax themselves to build a citywide rail system. Can rail also resurrect the city’s long-vanished middle class? -
Charlie and the MBTA
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s privatization initiative at greater Boston’s transit authority has realized short-term savings—but the cure is still adequate public investment. -
The Pittsburgh Conundrum
Can you have a model city in a left-behind region? -
Tilting at Windmills
Why the green jobs promise is still unfulfilled
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