ON TAP

Virtually all mainstream writers have imbibed the conventional wisdom that there is a simple divide between something called “free trade” and something disparaged as “protectionism.” Free trade, good; protectionism, bad. But how do you proceed when another country is clearly protecting its home markets and its exports—by subsidizing their manufacture and selling them below the […]

…another wildly divergent set of articles on what the super-rich have planned for the rest of us. Consider the contrasting takes in two news stories today, one in The New York Times, the other in The Washington Post. The contrast is clear even before you read the stories, since they’re expressed in the headlines. “Ahead […]

…on whether to defer consideration of DACA and keep the government open for three weeks. Democrats would be fools to take this deal. In three weeks, nothing will have changed, and Congress will go through this all over again. Public opinion supports extending DACA by margins upwards of 80 percent, depending on the poll. Even […]

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 […]

…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 […]

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 […]

I submit the following mots justes: neo-Confederate. The neoconservatives of the Reagan-George W. Bush era may be estranged from today’s GOP (hello, Bill Kristol), but the semi-abbreviation “neocon” need not be discarded. Only henceforth, it means “neo-Confederate.” The fundamental ideology of today’s GOP is white racism, with all its historic trimmings. In one particular after […]

The New York Times recently reported that more and more employers are considering hiring people with criminal records, as unemployment falls and labor markets tighten. As Keynes and the Keynesians have long argued, all the compensatory programs in the world are no substitute for full employment. We can support “ban the box” and other efforts […]

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! —Emma Lazarus, inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty, 1903 Why do we want all these people from […]

…politicians of all stripes will just have to figure out how to enhance his material gains. Is that so hard to figure out? Apparently, it is. Consider the bipartisan outrage we’re hearing from elected officials in coastal states over the decision of Donald Trump’s Interior Department to allow coastal drilling, quickly followed by an exemption […]