#NYTOpinion: @NYTimesKrugman: Fall of an Apparatchik

Paul Krugman

Wow — Eric Cantor lost his primary, by a large margin. Amazing.

Obviously I know nothing about his district, or what exactly happened. Fivethirtyeight does have something interesting, pointing out that Tea Party upsets seem correlated with the second dimension of DW-nominate, the Poole-Rosenthal system that maps roll call votes into an implied position space. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I might come back to this, but basically I’m telling you that I remain a serious nerd. Continue reading #NYTOpinion: @NYTimesKrugman: Fall of an Apparatchik

#NYTOpinion: Thomas B. @Edsall: The Downward Ramp

Thomas B. Edsall

With the bursting of the tech bubble at the start of the 21st century, two decades of growth at the high end of the job market — once the province of college graduates with strong cognitive abilities — came to an abrupt halt, according to detailed studies of employment and investment patterns by three Canadian economists. We are still feeling the ramifications.

But new evidence produced by Paul Beaudry and David A. Green of the University of British Columbia, and Ben Sand of York University, demonstrates that the collapse, between 1980 and 2000, of mid-level, mid-pay jobs — gutted by automation or foreign competition (and often both) — has now spread to the high-skill labor market. Continue reading #NYTOpinion: Thomas B. @Edsall: The Downward Ramp

@BillMoyersHQ: Race, the War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration

How did America come to have the highest rate of incarceration in the world? In this video, lawyer and activist Michelle Alexander says that unfortunate fact is not simply a response to crime but deeply connected to racial attitudes, fears and anxieties exploited by politicians over the decades. Continue reading @BillMoyersHQ: Race, the War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration

#NYTOpinion: Mark @Bittman: What Causes Weight Gain

Mark Bittman

If I ask you what constitutes “bad” eating, the kind that leads to obesity and a variety of connected diseases, you’re likely to answer, “Salt, fat and sugar.” This trilogy of evil has been drilled into us for decades, yet that’s not an adequate answer.

We don’t know everything about the dietary links to chronic disease, but the best-qualified people argue that real food is more likely to promote health and less likely to cause disease than hyperprocessed food. And we can further refine that message: Minimally processed plants should dominate our diets. (This isn’t just me saying this; the Institute of Medicine and the Department of Agriculture agree.) Continue reading #NYTOpinion: Mark @Bittman: What Causes Weight Gain

@BillMoyersHQ: #Guns in America After #Newtown

Here’s a look at some stats on guns — the deaths and school shootings, America’s public opinion and the failed Congressional attempt to take action — in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 27 people, including 20 children and the shooter.

Slate editors note in the introduction to their crowdsourced map that attempts to visualize gun deaths in the US (pictured below), determining the actual number of gun deaths each year is “surprisingly hard.” That’s because as many as 60 percent of gun deaths are suicides that usually go unreported by the press. Continue reading @BillMoyersHQ: #Guns in America After #Newtown

@BillMoyersHQ: How Republicans Are Creating a Crisis of Competence in Government

In January of 2001, a blue-ribbon Senate committee headed by Sens. Gary Hart (D-CO) and Warren Rudman (R-NH) released a report that would become famous for its prescient warning that “the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the US homeland to catastrophic attack.”

But what most people don’t remember is that the Hart-Rudman report also cautioned that “the United States finds itself on the brink of an unprecedented crisis of competence in government” that made such an attack more likely to succeed. Blaming a variety of factors for a “decay” in “the human resources of government,” the committee concluded that Americans’ “declining orientation toward government service” is “deeply troubling.” Continue reading @BillMoyersHQ: How Republicans Are Creating a Crisis of Competence in Government

Lonnie Bunch: America’s Moral Debt to African Americans | Smithsonian

“Though the slavery question is settled, its impact is not. The question will be with us always. It is in our politics, our courts, on our highways, in our manner, and in our thoughts all the day, every day.” – Cornelius Holmes

As a historian, I know slavery has left a deep scar on America. The reasons are many. I have found wisdom in the words of Cornelius Holmes, a former slave, interviewed in 1939, a man who saw brutality and separation of families. Holmes shared the dreams and melodies before freedom and then witnessed the reality of freedom.

One reason for my current retrospection is the fine essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the June issue of the Atlantic arguing that reparations are deserved and long overdue. He has gathered an amazing array of facts about racism, economics, violence and the role of the U.S. government, implicit and explicit. With pinpoint clarity, Coates has focused a scholarly light that shines into all the dark corners of this shameful chapter in our history. Continue reading Lonnie Bunch: America’s Moral Debt to African Americans | Smithsonian

White Iowa teacher tells black student to address him by saying, ‘Yes, sir, master’

An Iowa mother said this week that the Des Moines school board may have gone easy on a white teacher who told her black son to call him “master.”

Roosevelt High School student Jabre White, 17, recalled to The Des Moines Register the way his teacher, Shawn McCurtain, had told the class to head downstairs for a final exam in economics in mid-May.

“Yes, sir,” Jabre White remembered telling the teacher.

“You meant to say, ‘Yes, sir, master,’” McCurtain allegedly replied. Continue reading White Iowa teacher tells black student to address him by saying, ‘Yes, sir, master’