What are you reading? Political Books

If the stock market charts all start just after the crash of 1929, you should smell a rat.

Well, there are lots of graphs, which are nice to look at. Like picture books for adults :smiley:

True. I did like Factfulness.

I was talking about this the other with some young guy, how the Academic Left split from the Reformist Left in the 1960s and left the worker class behind, while managing to keep their political support…given Trump’s inroads with the working class the tide may have changed enough to make this book worth a gander.

Frank’s compellingly argued and well-supported thesis is that over the past few decades, the Democratic Party gradually transformed from being the party of working people to one that represents primarily the interests of professionals. The book was published about half a year before the 2016 presidential election, and it served as a warning that a continued failure to address this issue might well result in Trump prevailing over Hillary Clinton, or someone equally unpalatable becoming president in the future. After all, since the Democrats have effectively abandoned working people whose quality of life has been rapidly diminishing since the 1980s, who can blame them for trying something different?

It is with regret that I observe, a full presidential election cycle later, that the response of the liberal-left to the coronavirus pandemic demonstrates that we have learned nothing from the debacle of the 2016 election and intervening years. As exemplified by publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post , and the words of politicians from Gavin Newsom to Joe Biden, lockdowns and forced social distancing have become synonymous with the liberal Democratic approach to handling the pandemic.

At this point, it is beyond evident that these policies are extremely destructive to the poor and working class, especially those in the inner cities. The New York Times recently reported that an additional eight million people in the United States alone have become impoverished as a result of economic disruption due to lockdowns. Obviously, school closures adversely affect children from underprivileged backgrounds much more than those whose families can afford tutors, private schools, and laptops and have the resources to assist with remote learning. Recent studies have shown that, as should come as no surprise, poor children – particularly children of color – are falling further and further behind in school, widening the achievement gap.

People whose livelihoods depend upon their physical presence tend to be members of the working class. If their jobs are deemed essential – for instance grocery store employees or bus drivers — they must report to work regardless of whether or not they are vulnerable to a severe outcome from a coronavirus infection.

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Just about everything from MIT Press is boring.

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What’s he doing to that poor dove? :thinking:

Hmmm, equating religion with dreaming.

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A nice long interview on C-SPAN with Shellenberger:

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Love me some WW. Will have to track this book down.

Someone got himself a megafan!

Best Senator money can buy.

Show me one who hasn’t been propped up by rich donors.

Or, hey comment on Cuomo. He’s everything you accuse Trump of being. Right there for the taking.

Sounds good to me as the 1619 crap was ridiculous.

< The 1619 Project is not an intellectual exercise in search of truth. It’s a political exercise in search of power. More scholars could and should be calling out this false history,

A bright student with a tumultuous home life, Sowell was admitted to one of New York’s most competitive high schools but dropped out at age 16. He left home a year later, after a magistrate labeled him a “wayward minor,” and moved into a shelter in the Bronx for homeless boys, where he kept a knife under his pillow at night for protection. He took whatever jobs were available at the time—messenger, laborer—for a black high school dropout with few marketable skills. He didn’t get around to earning a college degree until he was already in his late 20s and had served in the Marines.

Oorah!

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Just started. So far, so great.