Budget Watch

If New York’s economy slows, reality-based budgeting must prevail

Two years ago, the outlook for New Yorkers was bleak on the political side but brighter on the economic front. Today, the trends appear to have reversed. The midterm election results portend more hopeful changes in Albany and, the effects of the partial federal government shutdown notwithstanding, Washington. On the ...
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Budget Watch

Why We Need to Listen to Rashida Tlaib

Defending liberal democracy from Trumpism is not a distraction for the Left

Last week saw the swearing in of the new, Democratic-controlled Congress, the fruit of the “blue wave” that swept across the country last November. The 116th Congress has been rightly hailed as “historic” for its demographic diversity. The country’s first female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was re-elected, and ...
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Why We Need to Listen to Rashida Tlaib

President as Prisoner

Trump has walled himself into a losing position 

Back in 1989 Bill Grover published a great book, The President as Prisoner. In that book, Grover argued that, regardless of who occupied the position of President, that person was likely to be seriously constrained by political pressures and institutional constraints. Politically, the president is constrained by powerful interest groups, especially ...
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President as Prisoner

The New History of Capitalism

And what it owes to poststructuralism

Where did the new history of capitalism come from? I would like to break from the common sense narrative and argue that the new history of capitalism should not be understood as rooted in or as a response to the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Certainly the crisis drew attention to the field ...
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The New History of Capitalism

The Biggest Dog You’ve Ever Seen

Interview with National Book Award Winner Sigrid Nunez

In November 2018, the prestigious National Book Award for fiction went to The Friend, a novel about grief, writing, friendship, and a Great Dane named Apollo. The author of The Friend (Riverhead Books, 2018) is Sigrid Nunez, a long-time faculty member of the New School Creative Writing Program. Nunez has published seven other books, ...
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The Biggest Dog You’ve Ever Seen

On Calls to Impeach the Motherfucker

The Democratic Party needs a “dialectic” between the words of Tlaib and the words of Pelosi

“We’re gonna impeach the motherfucker.” Thus declared Rashida Tlaib last Thursday night while speaking at a MoveOn event just hours after being sworn in as a new Congresswoman. A shitstorm of controversy ensued. Across the political spectrum Tlaib was denounced for her “vulgarity.” The New York Times headline reporting on her statement neatly summed up the response of ...
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On Calls to Impeach the Motherfucker

Crossing Borders Is My Life

Doing and teaching literary translation in the age of customs and border protection

I grew up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, in a country afraid its citizens would leave and wary of foreigners somehow contaminating or stealing something from the homeland. As we were preparing to leave Moscow forever (we thought) in 1978, my grandmother's youngest brother, whom she had ...
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Crossing Borders Is My Life

The Weekly Standard, Sheryl Sandberg, and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”

Past Present Episode 160

In this episode, Natalia, Niki, and Neil discuss the closing of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, changing public perceptions of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and the controversy over the 1944 Christmas classic “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: After twenty-three years, the ...
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The Weekly Standard, Sheryl Sandberg, and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”

Older Men’s Bargaining Power Hit by 36% Decrease in Job Tenure

2.9% unemployment rate for workers age 55 and older in December

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) today reported a 2.9% unemployment rate for workers age 55 and older in December, which represents no change from November. Despite the low headline unemployment rate, changes in job tenure over the last 30 years have reduced older workers' bargaining power, especially older men. In 1987, the ...
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Older Men’s Bargaining Power Hit by 36% Decrease in Job Tenure

A Public Seminar Happy New Year?

Reflections between hope and despair, with musical accompaniment

I wanted to declare, without hesitation: Happy New Year! But I couldn’t, as New Year’s celebrations passed. I fear a very unhappy one, with more of what we have been experiencing. Democracy, free speech, academic freedom, human rights, and the movements for class, gender, sexual, and racial justice are all ...
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A Public Seminar Happy New Year?