The first jobs report of 2018 is out, and overall the news is pretty good. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans will certainly try to take credit for the job growth and higher wages. But it would be more accurate to attribute this uptick to state labor policy—not the superiority of MAGAnomics and massive tax […]
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Posted inEconomic Policy
Indiana to Join Kentucky in Tying Medicaid to Work
The new Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, will announce today that Indiana will follow Kentucky’s lead and receive approval to implement work requirements in the state’s Medicaid program, according to a Politico report. Last month, the Trump administration signaled they’d allow requiring work for low-income people seeking health-care assistance, and Kentucky quickly […]
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Baseball’s Chief Wahoo Is Out on Strike Four (Sort Of)
Under pressure from Major League Baseball, the Cleveland Indians announced this week that beginning in 2019, they’ll retire the Chief Wahoo mascot—the cartoonish, red-faced figure that’s meant to depict a Native American chief—but only from on-field team uniforms. “We have consistently maintained that we are cognizant and sensitive to both sides of the discussion,” said […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Labor Department Covered Up Evidence That New Tipping Rule Could Lead to Wage Theft
In December, President Trump’s Department of Labor announced that it would roll back an Obama-era rule that limited when tipped restaurant workers would have to share their tips with other employees. Worker advocates warned that undoing the rule would allow employers to use tips from waiters and bar staff to subsidize the low wages of […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
ExxonMobil Plays Trump Like a Fiddle
President Donald Trump—the great dealmaker—has an ego fueled by flattery, which is allowing corporate America to play him like a fiddle. Since the passage of his massive tax cuts, Trump has trumpeted the news of one-time bonuses, wage hikes, capital investment projects, and job creation promises as affirmations of his genius. His State of the […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Hudson River Tunnel Supporter Bites the Dust
Democrats do get excited over Republican retirements. As things stand now in New Jersey, full of people incensed by President Trump and recently departed GOP Governor Chris Christie, the 11th Congressional District, a longtime Republican stronghold, may turn blue in the fall. But for commuters and travelers wanting to get from New Jersey to New […]
Posted inEducation in America
More College Students Risk Hunger
Tuition costs are sky-high. According to the College Board, the average yearly cost of attending a two-year community college in 2016 was $11,580. For a public four-year university, the cost was $20,090 per year and the private university sticker price was $45,370. These costs are alarming enough, but what’s even more shocking is that increasing […]
Posted inTAP
About that impending government shutdown: Who will blink first?
I’m guessing that Trump will. Why? Because he and the Republicans, as the governing party, have more to lose if the government actually shuts down. And because Trump, in the end game, is pretty good at making a deal, and likes to brag that he can get things done. And because the Democrats realize they […]
Posted inTAP
Six days ago…
…I was having an email exchange with the author of a piece I was editing on how Democrats can both turn out their base and reach out to voters outside their base in the 2018 midterms. We were going back and forth on three points in the piece—chiefly, on whether Latinos could be said to […]
Posted inTAP
Want to know why Democrats are failing to optimize their role…
Want to know why Democrats are failing to optimize their role as the true economic populists against the purely symbolic faux-populism of Donald Trump? Consider the bill to weaken the Dodd-Frank Act, now working its way through the Senate. The bill would exempt financial institutions as large as $250 billion in assets from many of […]
